


The Last Year

by distinguished_like



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, M/M Sex, Manga Spoilers, Reincarnation, Self-Harm, Terminal Illnesses, bottom!levi, mentions of self harm, moments of joy, so far - Freeform, spoilers up to potentially chapter 137, this may just end up being the angstiest thing I ever write, top!Eren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:00:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29319795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distinguished_like/pseuds/distinguished_like
Summary: Please someone [also] scatter, the proof that I existed here.[The curse of the founder persists through all of their lives, and navigating it within these foreign circumstances is a new challenge entirely.]
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Eren Yeager, Levi/Eren Jaeger, Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 27
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

_“A sparkle one second before, the world that left behind; if I am able to fly, please tell him;_

_countless number of birds whose wings are burnt,_

_scattered ashes, [and] laugh at the peace._

_Please someone [also] scatter,_

_the proof that I existed here.”_

–

* * *

Birdsong wakes him.

It’s soft and familiar, achingly so, and the gentle breeze against his face reminds him of chilled, porcelain fingers dancing skilfully along his profile. Still, his skin is burning, and it pulls at his flesh like a storm brewing along a formidable and electric horizon.

“Eren,” a low voice murmurs softly, and he feels the edge of the bed dip with the slender weight of a person. Funny, he thinks. The scents of earth and grass and flora bristle in his nose, and while his fingers twitch against the scratch of clean cotton, his mind remains in a soft field in a faraway place he can’t recall ever setting foot.

He opens his eyes slowly and blinks until they fall into focus on the figure at the end of the bed, angular face cracked in subdued concern.

“Are you crying?” Levi asks, eventually, placing a tentative hand on Eren’s knee with a hesitance that Eren had previously believed they had overcome. Eren raises his own hand to his cheek, alarmingly warm and littered with sweat, to find that yes, he is.

He rubs his palm over his eyes and sits upright, looking over to the white curtain as it blows gently with the eager breeze of mid-April. Birds chirp obliviously in the morning air. He feels Levi’s weight shift and he looks at him. His chest throbs, dull but strikingly present.

“Apparently,” he concedes, and it comes out in a half-laugh that rings as pathetic in his ears. He watches as Levi grinds his teeth, a habit he had developed in lieu of just _saying_ that he thinks Eren is up to no good, and Eren rolls his eyes dramatically in response. “I’m fine, idiot,” he promises, placing a hand over the one that Levi had balanced precariously on his right leg. Levi’s eyes flit between the point of contact and Eren’s face in such a calculative way that makes Eren think, _God, sometimes I’d still love to knock this guy out._ “I swear. I just… I feel like I had the longest dream.”

Levi’s eyebrows raise thinly up his forehead and, with muffled relief, Eren feels less like he’s being judged. “Oh,” he mumbles, apparently appeased by this answer. “What was it about?”

His genuine curiosity makes Eren want to pour his heart out, but he falters. “I… don’t actually know,” he admits, and pulls the cotton sheets higher up his bare torso. “Just felt _long._ You know,” he shrugs nonchalantly, though he feels admittedly off-kilter. “When you have a dream and you can’t remember it but you still feel the like… vibe?”

Levi’s lips quirk upwards into something like an amused grin. “Right,” he drawls, but there’s the hint of a warm chuckle in the bass. “The vibe. Got you.”

Eren, besides himself, smirks, and shrugs the hand off his knee. “Fuck you,” he manages, normality returning to him gradually but comfortingly. “Where’s my coffee this morning?”

Levi does smirk, openly, this time. “I brought something better.”

Eren frowns and looks dramatically around the room. Everything is, _obviously_ , where it should be. “Am I missing something?” he asks, genuinely, but nudges Levi’s hip with his foot. “I literally just want my coffee. Can you go, come back, and then we’ll do this whole thing again?”

Levi smiles, his eyes wrinkling slightly at the corners. Eren wonders when he started noticing them, those little wrinkles, but thinks better than to mention it to Levi, whose age had been something of a touchy subject from date number one.

“Fine,” Levi concedes, and pelts a white envelope against Eren’s bare chest; it catches at his nipple and Eren yelps petulantly. Levi’s gritty chuckle alleviates the irritation only slightly. “I want tears on queue upon my return, though.”

Eren pulls a disgruntled face in Levi’s direction. “That stays between _us,_ ” he warns, waving the envelope in his hands towards his partner threateningly. “Seriously, Mikasa will be on my ass about it.”

Levi stands suddenly and heads towards the door. “Read your damn letter,” he orders, and leaves the room swiftly.

Eren leans back against the pillows, sighing, and turns the envelope in his hands. It remains sealed – he affectionately recalls an occasion not long after their move-in date when Levi had accidentally opened some of Eren’s mail and had, unprovoked, emotionlessly and with absolute conviction, announced that he ‘was not a psychopath’ and ‘had absolutely no interest in controlling any aspect of Eren’s life whatsoever,’ before going to the bizarre and unnecessary trouble of re-sealing the envelope – for what useful reason, Eren still has absolutely no idea.

He unsheathes the letter and unfolds it delicately, sitting upright so that it lies within the trail of sunlight drifting from the slightly parted curtains.

 _Dear Mr Jaeger,_ it begins, and Eren holds his breath.

_I am pleased to inform you that after careful consideration by our admissions team, we would be delighted to have your work displayed as part of our upcoming gallery, title TBD, scheduled for April next year. Your designated representative and an agent will be in touch in due course, but in the meantime please begin compiling your portfolio and considering which works you would like to be displayed in preparation for your fortnightly intensive workshops, which should commence no later than the beginning of August. We look forward to working with you._

_Our sincere congratulations and best wishes,_

_The Sina Royal Department of Contemporary Art and Cultural Excellence_

“Holy _shit,_ ” Eren breathes, finally, green eyes blown wide, and his head shoots up at the sound of an earthy chuckle sounding from the doorframe.

Levi stands languidly, two steaming cups held firmly in his hands, leaning against the white panels with his lips pinched in what Eren knows to be the grin of one _smug_ asshole.

“Did you know about this?” he asks, gobsmacked, the paper wrinkling with the strength of his grip.

Levi shakes his head and walks towards the bed, placing Eren’s mug delicately on the coaster atop the bedside table. “No,” he says, calmly. “But did you seriously think they weren’t going to want to work with you? After that portfolio you sent in?”

At the question, Eren gawps uselessly and drops the paper to his side. He wouldn’t have applied if he’d thought he had no chance _whatsoever_ , but the palpable evidence of his… _‘excellence’_ between his fingers felt far too unrealistic even for his keen and relentless mind.

“If this would have been a condolence letter… _and_ you didn’t wake me up with a coffee… this would have been the start of a very fucking bad morning for you,” he says, his eyebrow arched in Levi’s direction as he sips his brew haughtily. Levi imitates the action with what Eren knows to be a cup of tea.

“It was a risk,” he admits, placing his free hand on his hip and holding his teacup with the other in that _bizarre fucking way_ that Eren loves and hates so much. “No regrets, mind you. I was too busy making phone calls to feed your stupid caffeine addiction, anyway.”

Eren frowns. “Phone calls?” he repeats. Levi blinks slowly and nods once in confirmation. “Who the hell were you ringing at this time? It couldn’t wait till you made it to work?”

Levi glares at him through squinted silver eyes. “Lose the attitude, your _excellence,_ ” he snaps, and Eren scrunches his face up in fatuous mockery at the dig. “You’ve got your coffee now, haven’t you?”

Eren takes a sip, pouting, but shrugs in defeat. He hates mornings, and knows he’s being a colossal asshole for absolutely no reason. Perhaps his dream had taken more of a toll than he had originally assumed, he ponders, but forces the feeling the thought rekindles deep, deep down, until the warmth of his coffee evaporates the denseness in his torso almost completely.

“Okay,” he sighs. “I’m sorry. Love you. But who were you calling?”

Levi nods. “It’s fine,” he says, waving his free hand carelessly to dismiss the apology. Eren smiles softly at the gesture and eases further into the pillows at his back. “I was calling your friends–” Eren opens his mouth to protest, but Levi flicks his wrist and Eren’s lips snap back together. “–acquaintances, friends, whatever you want to call them. They’re coming over later for _celebrations,_ or whatever it is you lot call the raucous howling that keeps me up till 4am every time they’re here.”

Eren blinks. “Laughter,” he says, slowly. “It’s called laughter, you heartless, heartless man.”

Levi shrugs and sips his tea loudly, shifting his eyeline off to the side. “That, then. Your friends are coming over for _laughter,_ later.”

Eren, because he just has to, puts his coffee back on the bedside table after swallowing most of it and leans across the bed, stretching so that Levi’s pale fingers tangle with his own. He looks up at him through his eyelashes, the softest smile ghosting his lips.

“Thank you,” he says, and truly means it. Levi’s eyes watch him for a moment and Eren revels in the way the terse edges to them glisten and ease.

“You’re welcome.”

Eren tugs on Levi’s hand until his knees are level with the mattress and kisses his fingers tenderly. Levi, in turn, bends his wrist so that his palm grazes against Eren’s cheek, and he hisses harshly.

“Fuck,” he curses, rubbing a thumb along his temple. “You’re boiling.”

Eren exhales and leans into the touch, which is reliably cool. “’M fine,” he promises, again. “Whatever that dream was about must’ve fucked with me, is all. I’ll take a cold shower.”

Levi hums. “Drink some water while you’re at it,” he orders. “You know, for once in your life, like a fucking _human_.”

Eren licks his lips and glares up at his partner. “What about some cordial?”

“ _Water,_ ” Levi snaps, brushing his thumb once against Eren’s hairline before pulling his arm back. “And text me on your lunch to tell me if you’re feeling better. We can cancel tonight if not.”

Eren grins. “Yes, _sir,_ ” he shouts, mockingly, and lies on his back. “But I’m fine, seriously. It’d be good to see everyone. Thank you.”

Levi tuts and shakes his head, hair waving with the movement. “You already thanked me,” he observes, and looks tiredly at the watch on his wrist that still holds his teacup. “I’ve gotta’ go before Isabel tries to turn the place into a fucking _cat café_ –” Levi’s cheeks cinch in disturbance and Eren grins at the memory. “And if you’re late again, eventually, one of your patients are gonna’ die and it’ll be for no good reason but your inhuman laziness. If that’s on your conscience then it’s on mine, too, and I could really do without the existential crisis at this point in my life. Get a move on.”

Eren takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He doesn’t _hate_ his job, but when he became a nurse, the naïve belief was that dedicating himself to curing the sick and impaired would provide him with some greater sense of purpose than wiping asses and changing catheters. It pays the bills, though, when he doesn’t have any commissions coming in or if the café takes a lull in income. He opens his eyes and forces himself upright, his legs dangling from the bed.

“Good boy,” Levi murmurs, going to turn away but stopping when Eren grabs his wrist, causing him to falter; Eren watches in dismay as warm tea sloshes over the side of the cup onto the wood floor.

Looking at Eren with his lips tight like that, Levi is admittedly menacing – Eren manages an apologetic grin nonetheless.

“ _You’re_ going to clean that up, like right now,” he grumbles, legitimately annoyed and swallowing deeply but, when Eren tugs on his wrist softly, he leans down.

The kiss is gentle, like every morning before Levi leaves for work. Soft and chaste, but Eren can always taste the sweetness of tea as it lingers against his mouth, can smell soap and the little amount of aftershave that Levi uses, lets it envelope him, and he doesn’t think he’s ever _not_ had to close his eyes and awe at the sheer bliss of it. It’s reliable, and safe, and he doesn’t think there will ever be a morning spent alone that will even slightly equate to the feeling of every morning with Levi.

He pulls himself away though, and Levi manages a curt smile.

“Seriously, clean that up,” he demands, walking toward the door and taking Eren’s mug with him. “Drink water, text me, etcetera. I’ll see you later.”

Eren smiles after the figure. “I will,” he vows. “I love you.”

Levi looks back at him fleetingly and breathes a soft, “I love you, too,” before he leaves Eren alone.

He tries gravely to push the disconcerting and hollow feeling that persists in his abdomen to the back of his mind as he makes his way downstairs to gather a cloth and some surface spray.

It _aches,_ though, he thinks. _Aches._

***

“Eren…!”

The voice is startlingly familiar in a way it had never been before and a disturbing chill surges up his spine. He flinches, but turns toward the voice regardless.

The bespectacled and frighteningly eccentric doctor whose ward he had recently been assigned to stands before him with an alarming number of clipboards under each arm, one balanced impressively beneath their chin. Eren shudders in a different way entirely.

“Hey, Doctor Zoë,” Eren offers, finding the _cringe_ evident in his voice despite his most valiant efforts to stifle it. He’s sat in the staff canteen, a sandwich balanced between his fingers. He lowers it sadly.

“Hey,” Hanji responds, smiling. Their eyes always seem so wide, and Eren never knows if it’s down to their evident near-sightedness or if it’s just the last vestiges of their sanity calling desperately for help. “You were on time today.”

Eren smiles guiltily. “Yeah,” he acknowledges. “Had some good news this morning.”

“Ooh, did you?” they croon, dropping the stack of clipboards onto the table with an ungodly amount of noise and taking the seat opposite him. “Was it that art thing?”

“Yeah, it was – how the hell did you even kno–?”

“No questions,” they interrupt harshly. “I take an avid interest in my staff – you know this already. Call it a personal hobby.”

Their smile, though innocent enough, twitches with something Eren daren’t question further.

“Alright…” he continues slowly, raising his sandwich once again and taking a bite. “Yeah, uh, they want to take me on for the exhibition next year. It’s a lot of work but if the stuff sells and word gets out, we’re hoping to start on an extension towards the backyard – a conservatory, whatever. Better lighting for me to work with, and then Levi can have the spare room back as his office.”

“Levi?” Hanji asks, tilting their head. “Your boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” Eren confirms, though _boyfriend_ never felt like the right word with Levi. Eren had had _boyfriends_ before. This was different. So, so different.

“Sweet!” Hanji exclaims enthusiastically. “Love that for you guys, really. I’ll be sad to see you go, though, once you’re famous.”

Eren chokes on some bread. Coughing, he wipes his chin. “I… doubt I’ll be leaving any time soon, if ever,” he admits. “It’s just a hobby, and it helps with money when we need it.”

“Well, there’s hobbies, and then there’s talent, and then there’s passion,” Hanji lists thoughtfully. “Never say never, you might really take off after this. It’s a big deal, don’t put yourself down.”

Eren blinks and stares vacantly, dumbstruck by the uncharacteristically kind words. “Wow, Hanji, thank you so mu–”

“Anyway!” they continue, slamming their hands down onto the clipboards and making them rattle jarringly. Eren clenches his eyes shut, effectively shut up; his head still aches with the fever of this morning. “Hate to burst your bubble but you’re gonna’ have to take over the rounds for me this afternoon. Could you stay an extra hour or so? I know you have your regulars to do but, well, time is quite literally of the essence around here. Do you mind taking on one or two of Moblit’s? He’s with me in the office, you see. You’re stealthy enough, I know you’ll get it done. Onyankopon might catch you up and help out later but, well. One of my trial patients passed earlier – the family’s visiting now but, it was _my_ trial, you see, so, devastating though it is, the paperwork is going to be a killer. Not to make a pun at this time, but–” taking a deep breath, finally, they continue, “you know how it is around here.”

Eren blinks and absorbs all of the information slowly, processing it with what little attention he has left to muster. He nods.

“Yeah,” he manages, leaning back in his chair. He tightens the short ponytail at the back of his head. Patients dying is never pleasant, but Eren understands Hanji’s eagerness to move forward better than he should, perhaps. Still, losing one you know stings, and he has to ask. “Yeah, sure, I can stay. Which patient passed?”

Hanji beams. “Thank you. I don’t think you were assigned to him at any point, though. Pyxis? Liver failure?”

No, Eren does not recognise him. Except he _does._ A stab of what feels like guilt spreads through his ribcage. He takes a sharp breath and forces it back for what feels like the millionth time today.

“No, you’re right, I don’t know him,” he admits. “Sad for the family, though. And for him.”

“Yeah, always is,” Hanji agrees, shrugging. “Oh, well! Work to be done. I’ll see you around, Eren. Enjoy celebrating tonight!”

Eren doesn’t have chance to question _how in the fuck they know about that_ before Hanji rises and sprints across the canteen toward the hallway, leaving Eren with the stack of what is now effectively _his problem_ and his half eaten sandwich that suddenly, he doubts he can stomach.

His phone, still lay on the table, lights up. He groans loudly, answering it instinctively and flinching at what he knows is coming his way.

“Have you fucking _died?_ ” Levi’s voice snaps at him. Eren looks around to make sure no one overheard. “Have you literally dropped dead? Convenient place for it, I suppose, easy clean-up, but I like to think I would have been informed one way or another.”

Eren sighs and pinches the skin between his eyes with his thumb and finger. “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry, I said I’d text,” Eren offers. “I’m alive, unfortunately. I’ve got to take on Hanji’s rounds and a couple of Moblit’s, so I’m probably going to be late tonight. Patient died. Paperwork.”

There’s a silence on the line and Eren waits patiently. “…Sorry,” Levi says, eventually. A pause, and then, “Are you okay?”

Bad mood notwithstanding, Eren smiles. Patients of Eren’s have died before now and he’d been inconsolable for days, Levi bearing the brunt of the jarringly quick mourning process each time.

“I’m fine,” Eren says, hoping his smile can be heard. “He wasn’t my patient, didn’t know him,” it feels like a lie, though it isn’t, and Eren grumbles quietly to himself about it. “Just going to have to help out a little, which is annoying, I guess.”

“Okay, good, if you’re sure,” Levi says. “Are you still feverish? Want me to call tonight off?”

“Levi,” Eren squares, voice considerably sturdier. “If you didn’t want people over tonight you could have just _not_ taken it upon yourself to invite them.”

Levi scoffs. “I don’t care who comes over,” he lies, and Eren knows it. “I wouldn’t have otherwise. But if you’re sick, then they can’t complain.”

“They can,” Eren corrects. “They can, and they will. I’m not sick anyway. Don’t cancel.”

“…Fine,” Levi surrenders, somewhat surprisingly.

“Are Isabel and Farlan coming?” Eren asks conversationally.

“I don’t think so, no,” Levi answers, and Eren hears his voice distantly continue, “ _Fucking shut up. Shut up. I’m busy. No, I won’t cover you. Ask one of the temps; what the fuck else did I hire them for?”_ A pause, a quiet _‘okay,’_ a sigh, and then, “Isabel says hi.”

“Hey,” Eren laughs. “Alright, just my lot, then. Lucky you.”

“Lucky me, indeed,” he moans, deadpan. “Alright, I’ll let you go. Try survive the next few hours. You need picking up?”

Eren checks his memory and shakes his head before remembering Levi cannot physically see him. “No, Mikasa offered yesterday. I’ll text her and let her know I’ll be late. Should be fine.”

There’s a bizarre silence that stretches slightly too long and Eren frowns deeply. “…Levi?”

“…Done,” Levi speaks eventually. “Emailed her.”

Eren snorts aloud but has the presence of mind to _not_ insult his ageing partner right now. “Alright,” he says. “Thank you.”

He hears Levi hum and then hang up suddenly, classically, because his phone etiquette is horrific and Eren’s beyond the point of correcting it. He glowers at the stacks upon stacks of checklists and notes in front of him and sighs, longing to be home and longing for this day to come to an abrupt halt as soon as possible.

***

Mikasa pulls into the car park slowly and honks the horn once to get Eren’s attention. He stalks towards the car and stops in his tracks upon opening the passenger door to be faced with one shit-eating _dick_ head grinning up at him.

“Get in the back,” Eren grits. “Now.”

“How old are you?” Jean asks, tilting his head. Eren grips the top of the open door, anchoring himself. “Like seriously, how old? I know your birthday was recently. What was it, Mikasa?” he turns in place to look at Eren’s sister, and Mikasa stares at him blankly. “The big 12?”

“22,” Mikasa answers, helpfully. Eren glares past Jean’s giant head.

“Tell him to get in the back,” Eren demands. “Seriously. Why’s he even here?”

Mikasa sighs tiredly and nudges Jean softly in the ribs, in response to which Jean spins his head dramatically and sputters.

“You can’t be serious?” he yelps. Mikasa stares at him, face emotionless and inherently menacing. Jean grumbles and unbuckles his seatbelt, lifting his gym bag from the floor. He rises and Eren steps calmly out of the way to let him pass. “ _You,_ ” Jean calls, pointing at Mikasa. “Are an _enabler._ And _you,_ ” he continues, pointing his finger at Eren in what he must think is threatening, but actually just looks petulant. “Are an asshole. Grow up. Get some perspective. _God._ ”

Eren smiles his sweetest smile and turns to settle into the passenger seat. He stifles his chuckle when he hears Jean’s door slam, causing the small car to rattle precariously. Eren turns around to look at his sister’s colleague, eyebrows raised pointedly.

“Who’s 12?” Eren asks. “That was very pubescent behaviour for you, Jean-bo. I’m appalled.”

“Get fucked,” Jean grumbles articulately. His knees are pulled almost to his chest and the sight pleases Eren beyond comprehension.

Eren turns back to face the windscreen, appeased. “What is he doing here, though?”

Mikasa, Eren thinks, rather pointedly focuses on reversing out of the car park. “Levi invited him. I offered him a lift.”

“He _what_?” Eren sputters, fixing his sister’s side profile with a glare, hoping that she feels it burning against her skin. She doesn’t react.

“Levi likes me,” Jean interjects. “It must be nice having somebody around other than him who can check your fucking ridiculous behaviours.”

Eren grips his seatbelt in lieu of swinging for the backseat. “Levi _likes_ you,” Eren retorts, speaking slowly and with targeted purpose. “Because you have all the charisma and energy of a fucking pensioner. You might as well be from the same fucking care home.”

Mikasa, her mouth pinched into a tight line, changes gear expertly before leaning back into her seat with ease. “I’m going to tell him you said that.”

Jean’s victorious laugh from behind him sends Eren careening against the dashboard, his palm slamming against it. Jean’s laughter rises in both pitch and volume.

“ _Why_ would you tell him I said that?” Eren implores, his jaw tense with, admittedly, a small but present trace of palpable fear. “You chat way more shit about him that I ever do.”

Mikasa shrugs and her lips, Eren sees, are quirked in a discreet half-smile.

“Funny,” is her answer, and the inescapable volume of Jean’s hideous cackle escalates to that of bat sonar. Eren swiftly grips the lever to his side and yanks it, causing his seat to propel backwards between Jean’s legs and against his chest. Eren lies there, his face tilted against the cushion of the seat. Jean yelps, and Eren deems that his target is met.

“Say you’re sorry,” Eren orders, pushing his weight against the seat and pressing against Jean’s torso further. Jean squeaks quietly. “Say it.”

“ _No,_ ” Jean chokes, struggling to breathe, his arms trapped between his chest and Eren’s seat. “Go fuck y-ourself.”

“Both of you stop it or I _will_ crash this car.”

“Then _you’d_ die,” Eren proposes, his eyes squinting harshly.

“Debatable,” Jean squeaks from behind Eren, and he puts more of his weight against the chair. Jean groans quietly.

Mikasa turns her head microscopically and Eren catches a glint of meaningful light in the blacks of her eyes. “Worth it,” she says, her voice stern.

They’re at a set of red lights, so their eyes meet in a calculated and prolonged way that means _war._ Eren greets her head-on, his brows set and his lips forced together in a grimace. Mikasa sits, inflexible and marble, almost; unmoving and strong in a way that Eren fears and admires and _despises._

A car horn honks from behind them. Jean coughs.

Slowly, without surrendering his fixation on Mikasa’s eyes, Eren gradually releases his grip on the lever and ascends upwards. Mikasa turns her head back towards the road and waves her hand in apology at the car overtaking hers.

Silence descends and Eren glares out of the window.

“…congratulations, by the way, _your royal excellence_ ,” Jean mutters grimly. Eren unbuckles his seatbelt and swan dives for the backseat.

He hears Mikasa’s sigh in his periphery. He expects that this is the longest ride home of her life thus far.

***

Levi stands in the doorway with a bottle of non-alcoholic cider held lazily between his fingers, a look of placid but authoritative dismay on his pale face.

By contrast, Eren and Jean are sat, posture abandoned, slack, on adjacent sofas, cloths pressed firmly to their noses. Eren’s glare persists over the edge of the fabric toward the top of Jean’s downturned head.

“What happened, again?” Levi asks, calmly. Eren shoots Mikasa, who is stood in the middle of the room having negotiated a stalemate by means of gruesome threats and morally ambiguous blackmail, a _look_ that lamely seeks reassurance.

“Honestly, make your assumptions,” Mikasa says, and Eren feels grateful that he won’t be thrown under the bus by his sister this time. “You probably won’t be wrong.”

Levi hums thoughtfully and sips his beverage coolly. “Jean’s idiot ego and Eren’s idiot temper clashed. No victor.”

Mikasa shrugs her shoulders. “That’s the gist of it.” Eren pretends not to be hurt by Levi’s lack of faith in him, but can’t fault the accuracy, so stays decisively silent on the matter.

“Predictable,” Levi mutters, moving across the room to close the blinds, directing an intimidating glare towards Eren that screams _we are going to talk about this_ on his way _,_ which Eren forces himself to ignore.

Jean, despite better judgement, speaks up, though his voice is clogged and nasally. “I figured you’d have him on a leash by now, Levi.”

Eren watches as Levi’s shoulders pinch in discomfort at the insinuation and hopes, prays to _God,_ that he decides to come to his rescue and take Jean _out;_ the man who, after careful consideration, Eren has recently decided must be his born nemesis. He fights the disappointment when Levi turns and levels Jean with a look of withered exhaustion. “Some beasts can’t be tamed,” he says, instead, and walks calmly toward the hallway, neglecting to look at Eren’s face which, all things considered, is probably a good thing. Eren isn’t prone to curtaining his emotions. Not like his sister, and not like Levi.

“The others will be here soon, so,” Levi sighs. Eren feels some _slight_ regret given the strain he seems to put Levi through, carelessly, time and time again. “Get yourselves cleaned up, do what you need to do. Mikasa,” he pauses and looks towards Eren’s sister with a gaze on the border of desperate. “If they start up again, I’m entrusting the situation to you. Wipe the floor clean with them. I don’t plan on dirtying myself with it. You’re forgiven for any injuries Eren incurs, in advance.”

Mikasa places a hand on her hip and nods. “Done,” she concurs, and Levi flees.

At Mikasa’s stare, Eren rises and drags himself to the bathroom for his second shower that day, making an honourable attempt to _not_ listen to the muffled sounds of Jean complaining while Mikasa cleans his face up over the kitchen sink. Honestly, he isn’t entirely sure _when_ his and Jean’s acquaintanceship became one so reliant on the promise of boisterous conflict, but he’d be lying if he said he adamantly _hated_ it. It’s a sort of outlet for him, he thinks; with everything else in his life feeling so structured, he appreciates the reliable unreliability of their rivalry. When Mikasa had told Eren she was taking on another trainer at the gym, explaining that he was _good_ and achieved consistently excellent results among their personal clients, Eren admittedly hadn’t expected Jean to worm his way into their lives so fucking thoroughly, the _parasite,_ but alas. Here they are.

He steps out of the shower, drying himself before wrapping a towel around his hips, and shudders when he hears a soft knock at the bathroom door.

Grimacing slightly, he manages a gruff, _“Come in,”_ and the door opens to reveal Levi stood calmly, a marble statue, amidst swathes of steam evaporating hesitantly around him.

“You’re literally an idiot,” Levi announces. Eren stares at him.

“Okay,” he concurs because, this time, fair enough, he supposes _._

“I thought I left violent and pointless morons downtown, but I guess I have a type, after all.”

Eren falters at that because it stings, Levi knows it, had meant it to, and Eren’s shoulders slump slightly at the insinuation.

“ _You_ were a violent moron downtown,” Eren retorts. “But alright, I get it. I’m sorry.”

Levi’s eyes scale Eren thoughtfully before he sighs and places a hand against the sink. “I didn’t mean that,” he mumbles, quietly, gazing downwards. “But you do need to give the fighting a rest, when it comes to Jean, at least. The guy’s harmless. Annoying, but harmless. _You_ stress me out,” Levi pauses and Eren watches as his face scrunches in admonishment before he flicks his gaze back upwards. “The guy’s a fucking gym instructor, he fights people for a _living_ – where the hell do you find the strength?”

Eren shrugs again because he doesn’t actually know – just knows that once the anger’s there he’s relentless and the power within him feels unbearable, uncontrollable, a struck match. He swallows but manages a coy smile. “I’m just _that_ good,” he answers, letting his hip bump against the side of the sink. “I could give you a run for your money.”

Levi’s eyes are sharp but Eren spies the undertones of amusement in his voice with some atuned observation. “I doubt that,” Levi says, and the relief in Eren’s chest when his lips pull upwards at the corners is insurmountable. “I _highly_ doubt that.”

“Guess we’ll never know,” Eren breathes, finding enough courage within himself to take a step towards his partner who, in turn, has to lift his head to meet his expression. “You love me too much to try.”

Levi takes a deep breath. “Not right now, I don’t,” he challenges, and Eren laughs authentically.

“Yes, you do,” he corrects and leans down to press a kiss to Levi’s lips, is proven correct when Levi leans into him, placing his hands on Eren’s shoulders and rubbing small circles into them with the curves of his thumbs. Levi kisses him back, and Eren folds his arms around his partners' waist, holding him close.

“You’re still warm,” Levi observes, but continues rubbing his hands over Eren’s now dry shoulders tenderly. “I’m gonna’ be keeping an eye on that.”

Eren nods. “I know you will,” he admits. “I’m fine. I’m literally a _nurse_ , Levi.”

Levi fixes him with a look of exasperation and challenge simultaneously and Eren rolls his eyes, fully expecting what’s coming. “You get your nose kicked in because of your skills as a nurse? Doctor’s orders?”

“Let it _go,_ ” Eren pleads, and Levi, _finally,_ allows himself a soft laugh.

Before he can respond, there’s a series of loud and obnoxious raps on the front door that echo throughout the whole house and Levi sighs, _loudly,_ earning an amused chuckle from Eren.

“I’m not going down there without you,” Levi warns, his expression deadly serious. “Get ready.”

Eren listens as Mikasa opens the door below them, and a chorus of noisy voices float their way around the building. Levi winces.

“Okay,” Eren chuckles, kissing Levi’s forehead before heading for their bedroom.

***

“So then Connie panics because, _shit_ , we have like four hours before the reception and the magician’s just completely _flaked_ on us–”

“And that profiterole cake you spent half the budget on hadn’t turned up yet, don’t forget–”

“Well, _duh_ , I’m not exactly going to forget that, am I? … so, anyway–”

Eren watches. Just watches. Silently. Patiently. As if waiting for a divine moment of absolution.

Something doesn’t feel right, he thinks. He had spent the last 16 hours or so successfully repressing this sense of wrongness that had embedded itself _painfully_ within him, but suddenly it feels a little too forceful to evade.

Eren can access the light and joyous atmosphere in the room from memory alone, but the sights and sounds directly in front of him are muffled in sporadic glares of shadow and light. He feels as though he is looking at his friends through a thick mirror; covered in heated condensation, the glass refusing to crack.

Everyone is laughing openly at Connie and Sasha’s story, even Levi, and he knows that they own a hospitality business now; knows that because he’s known that for the last year since they had a party celebrating its launch. Except it doesn’t feel like _his_ reality. It feels _wrong_.

It’s Sasha. She’s different. Aged, maybe – her face is defined where he recalls it being soft, and her eyes, though unchangingly bright, are pointed with the wisdom of adulthood which must now have planted itself behind them. Except, as he traces her features with care, his gaze moving over her slowly and his mind desperately trying to access some level of information that currently he feels he is not privy to, it’s as if he is seeing two versions of her that do not coincide. Cannot co-exist. Not even slightly.

He cannot take his eyes off her, hadn’t been able to from the second she bounded into the dining room, noticeably later than everybody else, even Connie, and he subconsciously worries that this will become obvious at some point but, so far, no one had questioned his disconcerting silence and his admittedly invasive inspection of Mikasa’s old roommate.

“Eren,” a soft voice, Armin’s, momentarily cracks the spell that had entranced him so thoroughly. Of course, Eren thinks, it would be Armin. Had to be Armin. “What are you thinking?”

Eren blinks and forces his head to turn towards his friend. The obvious disparity he feels when looking at Sasha isn’t there with him, but in its place is the deep notion of shared feeling, shared responsibility, that feels jarring alongside the solidity of the version of their friendship that he is familiar with. He blinks and takes a swig of his beer, hoping beyond words that it comes across as collected.

“Do you think…” Eren manages, careful to be quiet, though Connie’s bellowing laughter drowns most other forms of noise out anyway. “ _Don’t_ you think Sasha looks different?”

Armin frowns and glances towards their friend. Eren admires the way he can _see_ the machinery behind Armin’s blue eyes churn with intellect, with knowledge, with an observational ability beyond any that Eren had ever known. He waits for Armin to inevitably confirm his astute findings.

“I think she…” Armin begins and Eren thinks, victoriously, _yes, yes, you see it too, don’t you?_ until his friend’s voice continues with, “she’s… cut her hair differently?”

Eren blanches at the words and leans into Armin’s personal space accusingly; Armin, in turn, leans back against the invasion. “Are you for real?” Eren asks, and Armin blinks, one blonde eyebrow raising worriedly. “You don’t see it?”

Eren follows Armin’s line of vision across the dining table toward Sasha again, who is stood behind Mikasa with her arms wrapped tightly against her chest, waving from side to side despite his sister’s obvious reservations. He waits with bated breath for his friend, his _genius_ and _reliable_ and _honest_ friend to see what Eren sees, to feel the cave within his chest as Eren feels, where familiarity and a sense of _knowing_ used to reside.

“Eren,” Armin begins slowly. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”

 _Right, then,_ Eren thinks, defeat clouding his mind, and he leans back into his seat.

“Okay,” he surrenders, forcing a smile to abate Armin’s concerned expression. “It’s probably nothing, then. I don’t know. I just felt like something was–”

“ _Oi,_ ” Connie bellows, and the room falls silent. “Is our story not entertaining enough for you two? Anything you’d like to share with the class?”

All eyes in the room fall onto Eren and for the first time the clarity with which he sees them is overbearing. He feels his skin heat uncomfortably and it becomes painfully obvious when he feels the cold caress of Levi’s hand over his from his other side. He looks at the hand, follows it up to his partners' face, the face he knows so well, a face he can and has traced from memory countless, countless times, a face so reliable and so comforting that Eren has dreamt about it every night since they met, possibly even _before,_ and finds that there are features that should not be there, _are not there, but should be there,_ a hardness that he hasn’t seen on his Levi’s face in months, nearing _years,_ casting grave shadows over his eyes.

Eren pauses over his right eye and his stomach churns as the hues of blue and silver glaze over his pupil into a dark and oppressive grey.

“Eren called the Captain old today,” Mikasa speaks. A part of him knows she’s trying to distract from his bizarre mood, but his eyes blow wide, and he stares after his sister. He finds himself gripping Levi’s hand tightly, too tightly, but cannot _conceive_ the notion of letting go.

“What did you just say?” Eren snaps, his voice hoarse. He’s acutely aware of the multitudes of sets of eyes bearing into him, Jean’s and Armin’s and Connie’s and Sasha’s eyes that _are dead,_ Eren thinks. _She’s dead._ Except no, she’s not. She’s alive.

_She’s dead. You killed her._

_No,_ Eren thinks back, defiantly, and breathes deeply.

“Mikasa, what did you just say?” he repeats, and the fear in her eyes does not suit her.

“I said that you called Levi old today,” Mikasa answers, cautiously.

“Eren…” Levi’s low voice begins, quietly, warningly, but it is halted when Eren is forced to snatch his hand away from Levi’s. He smashes it painfully against the top of his spine, the back of his neck, the _nape,_ his brain screams, and the area his hand covers burns with an unfiltered level of scathing agony he has never felt before in his life but _oh, he has._

He doesn’t know when he fell, but he remembers the dim sounds of his friends’ fear, of their panic, until his eyes close and he sees a black landscape littered with violent strikes of red, electric and alive, like lightning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, then!
> 
> I've only ever written Beatles fanfiction so... this feels weird but, certain comments on my 'farewell' post reminded me that things go around and come around and you can't really help it. This is obviously not a Beatles fic, is something new and different but life's hard so being here feels both frightening and comforting in a multitude of ways. This AN isn't about that, really, though, so I'll address some things:
> 
> I'm aware that this is a controversial ship. I watched AOT when I was in my mid-teens, but only recently found my love for it upon my sister watching the final season and so I feel particularly aligned to the characters as they are now. As someone who has written fics, exclusively, about real people in sometimes dubious contexts, I feel limited on the wisdom I can instil on the morals of shipping in general and I understand that with this pairing there is a /lot/ to say. 
> 
> I want anyone who reads this to be aware that I have researched extensively the moral implications of this ship, as well as the psychology behind its existence and its popularity; I won't delve into it all now cos it'd be an essay but, for minor readers (because God knows I read so many things I maybe shouldn't have when I was a minor and NOT because I want to patronise you), I do not want the implication of significant or illegal age gaps to feel normal to you. It isn't, and I'm not inclined to ship them; in this case, both characters are of age (as I know them to be) and I like to think the relationship dynamics and identified issues within them are addressed in a way which raises questions of health, of toxicitiy, of mutual healing, etcetc. This literally emerged from a dream I had and it's going to be heavy and sad and light when I can fit it in. Thank you for reading!
> 
> //All of that being said, I'm happy to agree to disagree where some Ereri matters are concerned because as said, the psychology behind the ship does actually make quite a lot of sense if not in canon etcetc. Please do feel free to leave comments and kudos!! They're really appreciated and as someone who isn't involved in fandom life anymore (I unfortunately don't have any socials I can provide you with just yet), I'm excited to be back on ao3 and to discuss AOT as well as the universe within this fic with you guys because recently it is literally ALL I can think about woops. Thank you again!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> / I am not a doctor, needless to say! All mistakes my own :)

“Levi.”

The voice muttering his name doesn’t sound at all like the person he knows it belongs to; it comes out weak and broken where it should be firm and reassuring. Mikasa takes the seat beside him and passes him a disposable cup which scolds his skin upon contact; he grips onto it anyway, a sweltering lifeline.

“You should go home,” she says, her head tilted downward as she stares at her own drink. The silence that follows her words is filled with the muffled sobbing and nervous chattering of strangers who litter the cold hallway; faintly, Levi wonders how Eren can stomach this every day. He wants all of them to shut the hell up.

“ _You_ should go home,” he responds, the bite in his voice unreasonably aggressive, perhaps. He can’t find it within himself to feel guilty about it.

“…I can’t,” Mikasa murmurs, barely a whisper.

“Join the club, then,” Levi grumbles tastelessly. He raises his cup as if to take a sip but, blinking once, lowers it back toward his lap. He feels as though he might be sick.

“He’s going to be fine,” Mikasa says, and Levi can’t tell if she’s saying it to him or to herself.

“Yeah. Unless he isn’t,” Levi offers helpfully.

He feels Mikasa flinch beside him. “Stop it,” she breathes wetly. Levi looks over to see her eyes, hooded and fixated on her lap, as small tears spill softly over the edges. He sighs tiredly.

“Alright,” he says, leaning back. “Alright,” he repeats, softer.

The last day and a half had been a cruel and incessant dream – a _nightmare,_ he corrects, mentally, and a ruthless one, at that. He felt numb with it all. He hadn’t felt so _apart_ from Eren in a long time, if ever, and he had to fight tooth and nail to secure even this parse proximity. Mikasa is his only next of kin and, for the first eight hours of his hospitalisation, she had been the only one allowed into the lightless hallway that now suffocates them: a small and fruitless victory, ultimately. It had taken too long to convince the hospital staff to let him through. _Too long,_ and _too much_ evidence to prove Levi’s significance in Eren’s life. Pulling out the palpable receipts of their tethered existence felt personal, _painful,_ as he thrust sheets upon sheets of bank statements, their old tenancy agreement, their mortgage, their fucking _water bills,_ towards the receptionist; all of the trivial and mundane things that encompass what their relationship falls down to, at the end of the day. The solidity. The everyday _._

Fleetingly, Levi thinks that they _should_ adjust Eren’s records to reflect this, but flinches away from the thought. One thing at a time.

His head snaps up at the obnoxious sound of a set of double doors flinging open. He’s not the only one. Heads raise in a sort of pitiful wave along the stretch of hallway, which reeks of something sullen and morbid. Death, probably. The salt of tears. He finds subdued comfort in the overbearing stench of disinfectant.

Hopeful expressions rise and fall as the tall figure in a white coat passes the strangers that Levi has come to detest. He doesn’t know why. He wants to not be here, with them. He wants to never see any of their grief stricken faces again. It makes him feel _sick_.

The relief he expects to feel when the doctor stops in front of him and Mikasa does not come. He looks at them calmly, though he knows his pupils are dilated and his eyes painfully bloodshot; he needs to sleep, but the prospect of returning to his and Eren’s empty bed with nothing but his thoughts makes him want to punch something.

“Miss Ackerman?” the doctor inquires, a smile on their face that Levi so desperately wants to wipe off. They look at Mikasa and he feels like he does not exist, doesn’t think he wants to, anyway.

“Yes,” Mikasa confirms. “Is he–?”

“Mr–?” the doctor continues, a little rudely, Levi thinks. They look at him now, and he’d give up his limbs to be far, far away from here.

“Ackerman,” Levi answers, and flicks his wrist, out of habit, towards Mikasa. “Coincidence.”

“Okay,” the doctor says in understanding. “Levi, right?”

For the first time in nearly two days, Mikasa and Levi look at each other in mutual bewilderment, before redirecting their inquiries towards the brown eyes behind the glasses. Levi does not recognise them and, wordlessly, Mikasa suggests that she doesn’t, either.

“…yeah?” Levi speaks after an uncomfortable second passes. The doctor’s grin widens, and Levi has never wanted to see an expression turn miserable more in his life.

“Doctor Zoë,” they offer, finally. “Hange, Hanji, call me what you like, really. It’s _so_ great to meet you.”

Levi detests how thrilled they sound while Eren lies somewhere, in what kind of state, Levi _still_ has no idea. He recognises the name. “Right, yeah,” he forces out, and leans into Mikasa. “Eren’s boss.”

“Colleague, _please,_ ” Hange corrects. They irritate Levi. Immensely. “Boss makes me sound so old. I _hate_ that.”

Levi stares at them and waits. Hange meets his eyeline and blinks as if confused by the lull in pleasantries and chit-chat, so Levi lowers his head and widens his eyes, hoping his impatience is plain, a threatening prompt for them to continue.

“Oh! Right!” Hange exclaims, laughing. “ _Eren_ , obviously. Sorry. I don’t usually do the whole speaking to relatives part, so please excuse my lack of taste in the matter but, well. I like Eren. And curiosity killed the cat so, here I am!”

The anger that begins to trickle through Levi’s bloodstream is persistent. He lifts a hand to grip the arm of his chair and barely registers Mikasa’s hold on him until her fingernails graze into the flesh of his wrist.

He breathes deeply, once, and is grateful when Mikasa speaks next.

“Please,” she begs, the exhaustion tangible in her tone. “Is he–?”

“Awake?” Hange interrupts. Levi tenses and Mikasa’s nails press deeper into his arm. “No, sorry.”

Levi swallows and focuses on the veins in his eyes as they throb in time with his heart. Mikasa’s grip on him becomes ever tighter, and he senses that she isn’t doing it for his benefit anymore.

“The _good_ news is,” Hange proceeds, and Levi has to force himself to _listen_ to the words. “His fever broke about an hour ago. It was tricky and, from a professional’s perspective, it didn’t look good. But, as someone who knows Eren, well. I didn’t doubt in the slightest that he’d put up a good fight and, luckily, I was right.”

“When can we see him?” Mikasa snaps, her voice a little sturdier than before.

“I can’t really answer that,” Hange admits, their eyebrows pinched in thought. It’s the first suggestion of remorse that Levi has seen on their expression so far. “Soon, I hope, but it’s still up in the air. We have to monitor his temperature and we’d like to get his blood pressure down _considerably_ before we think about waking him up, but. I don’t expect it’ll be more than a few hours, if his body keeps up the good work.”

“What…” Levi speaks, but has to clear his throat before continuing. “Do you have… _any_ idea of what actually happened?”

The question has plagued Levi’s thoughts since he’d watched Eren’s face morph into something so foreign and so glaringly _hard_ that night in the dining room. He looked _possessed_ , and if Levi were a better man, he would have to admit that it _scared_ him. Shitless. His blood runs cold with the memory.

“No, not really,” Hange exhales, shrugging, and Levi grinds his teeth. “He doesn’t have any underlying conditions. At first glance I’d have thought pneumonia, maybe, but nothing’s coming back that suggests it. If I’m completely honest with you, Levi,” Hange pauses and looks genuinely unnerved. “He’s completely healthy. Not a scratch on him, internal or otherwise. My only guess is that his body went into shock at some point and… shut down. Protected itself, if you like. Without an obvious physical trigger, though, it is… interesting, to say the least.”

“So,” Levi manages. His throat aches with every word. “What exactly are we supposed to do with that?”

“After he wakes up,” Hange says, and Levi’s _slightly_ grateful for the conviction with which they speak. He _will_ wake up. “I’m going to keep him in for a little while, just to monitor him, but the next logical step would be to refer him to the neurology department for an MRI. The rest of his body, from what I can see, checks out fine.”

Mikasa inhales. “Neuro…? His _brain_ , you mean?”

Hanji nods. “Yep. Well, his central nervous system, but yes, mostly, his brain. It’s my next best guess. Admittedly, it’s not my expertise. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more, but rest assured I’m going to be playing an active role in Eren’s diagnosis and treatment from here on out,” they pause and smile, their brown eyes shining over with a hint of gold where the abrasive and clinical lighting catches them. They look at Levi.

“I never could resist a challenge. Eren will tell you that himself.”

***

“Such an _idiot_ ,” is all that Levi can think to say when he’s faced with Eren’s sleeping body. He looks tired, alarmingly so. It does not suit him, not r _emotely_ , the grey bags above his usually tanned cheekbones the only evidence of any sickness whatsoever. It takes a lot for Levi to refrain from shaking his shoulders, from breathing life into him. His hair is untied, splayed across the white pillow; Levi mindlessly smooths a strand of it and tangles it around his finger.

“I… heard that,” a gruff voice exhales from beneath him, and the instinct to jerk away is a powerful one. He stays, though his entire body stiffens despite his scripted resolve.

“…Good,” Levi manages. He blinks and flexes his jaw. “You are.”

Eren’s eyes peel open slowly and Levi fights the surge of chagrin when his lids cannot continue past halfway. A dark slither of green beneath his eyelashes doesn’t soothe him as he previously assumed it might.

The door slams open and Levi cringes when Eren’s gaze flickers weakly towards the noise.

Hange gasps loudly and drops a thick folder to the floor with a bang. “ _Eren!”_ they squeal, far too loud and far too inconsiderate for Levi’s liking. Still, the ghost of a diminutive smile on Eren’s lips makes his chest throb, and he drops the strand of hair back to the pillow, rubbing a thumb along Eren’s hairline instead. He’s not sure he’d be able to stop touching him in some way, if anybody asked him to, now. Not sure he could give him up.

“…Hey…” Eren manages. His voice is so quiet and so hoarse that it’s jarring in Levi’s ears, doesn’t sound like his Eren. “Hanji…”

“Oh! _Good,_ ” Hange coos eagerly. “You remember me. That’s _good._ ”

Eren’s eyebrows dip into a feeble frown and his eyeline travels back to Levi. Levi’s glad for it. Wants to keep it there, all for himself.

“Levi…” Eren mumbles questioningly, and Levi wants nothing more than to wipe the look of sheer confusion off his face for good, wants to answer every one of the questions that he can _see_ churning behind his eyes. Can’t, though. He can’t. He has too many of his own.

“Yes,” Hange pipes up before Levi can say anything. “Levi, _indeed_. I told you to buzz for me when he woke up.”

Levi forces his stare away from Eren to shoot a violent glare at the doctor. “He has literally _just_ this second opened his eyes,” he grits. “Give us a damn second.”

“’S fine,” Eren breathes, and Levi struggles to subdue his disappointment. “Some… water, would be nice… though…”

Levi’s gut churns. “Fuck,” he manages. “You must be sick.”

Eren’s cheek twitches into a meek smirk. “Shut… up,” he moans. Levi watches uselessly as Eren’s forearm spasms but fails to move much further; he gets the message, though, and moves his own arm down, tangling their fingers together. Eren squeezes, stronger than Levi had honestly anticipated. It comforts him, somewhat.

“I’m on it,” Hange announces, excitedly. She turns and leaves the room hastily; Levi lets out a loud breath.

“I seriously don’t know how the hell you work with that,” he admits, forcing a weak grin onto his face that, after days without, makes his cheekbones ache.

Eren grumbles. “They’re… not _that_ bad,” he says, and there’s a small titter in the words that Levi assumes is laughter. Heat pools in his chest and his breath catches slightly in his throat. He leans down, the arm that remains on Eren’s pillow holding his weight.

“I missed you,” he whispers, his eyes flickering over Eren’s features, his eyes, his mouth, his jaw. “You _asshole._ I missed you,” he pauses and forces the words out because he knows that Eren likes to hear them. “ _So_ fucking much.”

Eren tilts his head a little to the side, the corners of his eyes crinkling with the strain of smiling. “No… coffee, this morning… though.”

The bark of a laugh, when it escapes his mouth, shocks Levi enough to make him look away from his partner and assess the empty room.

“I literally hate you,” Levi complains, and fixes Eren with an irritated but inevitably affectionate glare. “Slip back into a coma already.”

Eren bares his teeth, this time, his lips parting happily. “No… you don’t,” he whispers. Levi can’t determine if the softness with which the words are spoken is deliberate, or if it’s just an emblem of his exhaustion. It catches him off guard, either way. He swallows deeply.

“No,” he admits, licking his lips, the muscles in his face slackening. He shakes his head gently. “No, I don’t.”

They stare at each other wordlessly for a long while, and Levi gets the feeling that they are both seeking out answers that lay hidden within the other. Levi finds nothing there, though. Hopes Eren found something. Doubts it sincerely. Regretfully.

The door opens again, quieter this time, and the figure that he knows to be Mikasa’s bounds over to the bed with unnerving agility. She touches Eren’s other arm, and her brother looks her over with what Levi recognises as dread.

“How are you feeling?” Mikasa asks, instantly. Eren licks his lips slowly.

“…Hello to you, too.”

Mikasa rolls her eyes, but Levi can see the redness around the rims from the hours she had spent crying and the energy wasted on poorly concealing it. He feels a togetherness with her that he has never felt before.

“Hanji’s bringing you water,” Mikasa informs him. “She told me you were awake and – Eren, _God,_ I – _we_ – we were–”

Eren coughs loudly and Mikasa stutters, her eyes wide with alarm. She opens her mouth to speak, and Levi feels undeniable pride swell within him when Eren musters the strength to lift the hand that isn’t holding Levi’s into a dismissive wave.

“Shh…” Eren hisses, and Levi openly smirks. Mikasa waits, her breath obviously bated in anticipation of Eren’s words. “You…” he begins, taking a deep breath. Mikasa blinks patiently.

“You… look like… _shit,_ ” is what he says, and Levi bites his lip, hard.

Mikasa blanches momentarily before raking her eyes over her brother’s incapacitated figure.

“…You’re one to talk,” she says, eventually. Levi does not miss the glint of amusement in Eren’s eyes, the way his cheekbone twitches and his chest rumbles in silent laughter.

For the first time in far too long, Levi feels like the world and him are no longer separate entities. He feels like he’s come home. Tethered, completely.

***

It’s three days until Eren starts to make his restlessness obvious.

He’s, mostly, back to normal, inherent brattiness returning to its rightful place easily. He had ordered Levi to go to the store and fetch him some Thai Sweet Chilli Sensation’s with all the gall of a superior officer and where, ordinarily, Levi would have taken issue with his tone, chastised him for his immaturity, _what the hell did your last slave die of,_ it feels like the final piece of _Eren_ has returned to his life, loudly and boldly, a beautiful, barely controlled explosion. He grabs some Coke in addition to the crisps in quiet celebration of Eren’s decisive return to life.

When he returns to the public ward that Eren had recently been moved to, imminent threats to his life no longer an immediate concern, he watches as Eren paces back and forth along the stretch of wall where two long, landscape windows let swathes of sunlight filter into the dim space.

“You took your sweet time,” he bites when Levi reaches him. Levi smiles. Can’t help it. He’s back _,_ alright _._

“You’re right,” Levi replies. “I was flirting with the cashier. Thought I’d look into how to go about taking you off the mortgage, while I was at it.”

The muscles in Eren’s jaw tense and untense quickly and his eyes, bright, once again, glimmer in irritation. Levi shifts his weight from one foot to the other so that his hip jerks outwards, raising his eyebrows expectantly.

Eren’s shoulders slack and he rubs a hand through the waves of hair that he had neglected to tie back.

“…Sorry,” he breathes. Levi stares at him blankly. “Thank you,” he adds, and takes the crisps and Coke from Levi’s hands, moving to settle back onto the hospital bed. Levi takes a seat in what had become _his_ chair; honestly, he’ll be a little sad to see it go. Comfy.

He frowns when his eyes reach the bedside table and spies a thick bouquet of lilies, roses, and baby’s-breaths blooming out from a white box tightened with light blue ribbon.

“Which poor bastard is wasting their money on getting _you_ flowers?”

Eren, chewing loudly and _messily_ on his crisps, spins his head to the table and shrugs his shoulders before peering into the bag in his hands like a vulture.

“Don’t ask me,” he dismisses. “He’s your buddy.”

Levi’s eyebrows furrow deeper, if it were at all possible, and he opens his mouth to protest.

“That pig you used to hang around with,” Eren offers in clarification, crumbs falling from his lips.

“Pig’s rich coming from you right now,” Levi teases. Eren ignores him. “I haven’t spoken to him in ages. How’d he even know you were in here?”

Eren swallows loudly and scrunches the empty packet up, throwing it into the bin at the side of the bed. “He knows Hanji,” Eren answers, taking a swig of his Coke and settling against the pillows, which are stacked impressively high at his back. “They went to college together, or something. They must’ve mentioned us to him. I don’t know.”

Levi’s nose scrunches at the intrusion. “Still can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business, then,” he grumbles, and Eren rolls his eyes.

“ACAB,” he whispers in response, and Levi tilts his head questioningly.

Eren stares after him like he’s stupid. _God, he’s missed him._

“All cops are bastards,” Eren translates.

“True enough,” he concedes, folding his arms against his chest.

Eren licks his lips and leans upwards, pulling his hair back. “Still, I guess we owe him a little,” he takes the bobble from his wrist with his teeth. “I doubt we’d have met if he wouldn’t have dragged your scrawny ass uptown for good.”

Levi glares at him pointedly. “We don’t owe him shit,” he barks, while Eren ties his hair into a bun. “I _bought_ the café off him years ago and selling Lobov out was in my best interests either way. I didn’t do it for _his_ benefit.”

“Well,” Eren continues. “You’ve sure as hell reaped the benefits he offered you. Can’t deny that.”

Levi shrugs. “You take what you can get,” he says. “ _Flowers,_ though…”

Eren fixes Levi with a look almost identical to his own. “ _Pretentious,_ right? I know.”

“He’s never even met you,” Levi mutters irritably.

“Yeah,” he acknowledges. “Still. I won’t pretend like him paying our deposit wasn’t the biggest fucking help, like, ever.”

Levi rolls his eyes. “We’re paying him back, and he only did that because he still has it in his thick skull that I’m gonna’ ditch the café and work for him.”

Eren hums. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Please don’t, though. I’d have to divorce you on the grounds of if I ever became a Frontline Wife I’d have to literally kill myself.”

“You’d have to marry me first to divorce me, idiot.”

"True. Maybe Erwin will pay for that, too.”

Levi scoffs loudly. “Probably, but we’d have to invite him.”

Eren shakes his head frantically. “God,” he gasps. “He’d turn up in full fucking military uniform with his medals and shit on display. I _hate_ that.”

Levi chuckles. “He would, too,” he concurs. “What a bizarre tradition.” 

Eren nods his head. “Right? It’s not like I turn up to weddings in my fucking graduation gown, cap and all. Why rub your achievements in? It’s weird.”

Amused by the conversation, Levi quirks an eyebrow challengingly. “What would I wear, if that were the case? I _boast_ my utter lack of achievements.”

Eren hums thoughtfully and Levi awaits his answer. “I guess you’d just have to go naked,” he concludes, eventually. “Flex your gangster battle scars.” 

Levi rolls his eyes, inwardly berates himself for allowing _that_ can of worms to be opened. “I was not a _gangster,_ ” he argues.

“Alright, go as a fucking teabag, then,” Eren levels, and Levi closes his eyes tiredly.

“…Naked’s fine,” he surrenders, and Eren’s triumphant grin makes his mind cloud with the familiarity of it, the iridescent warmth of his life with this glorious little moron.

Marriage isn't on the cards for them. They’d spoken about it before, conversationally, not long after they first met; Eren’s Thursday evening art class at the café had ended and he’d sidled up to the counter, as usual, sparking conversation about nothing and everything with Levi who, at the time, could not think of anything worse to endure. Eren had spied Erwin’s wedding invitation creeping out of Levi’s breast pocket which led to a long and disconcertingly passionate tirade about how marriage is a symbol of capitalism and misogyny; Levi, ultimately, agreed that the ten grand you might spend on a wedding would be far better spent on more practical things like houses and cars and insurance.

Still, the implications drag up a memory that he loathes to explore. It feels like jinxing himself.

“Eren…” he starts and cringes a little at the sight of Eren’s wide and openly curious eyes.

“What?” he says, innocently, and Levi sighs. He clasps his hands together in his lap, staring at them, anchoring himself.

“When… when they brought you in that night,” he starts, and Eren noticeably deflates. He’d made an impressive and valiant point of evading all discussion of the events that led up to him being here and while normally Levi would be the first to force an interrogation, this time… it feels a little sore, still. Even for him. “They…” he grumbles in annoyance. He hates talking. Would quite like for Eren to just _know_ things. His aversion to communication took up about four of the mandatory therapy sessions he was tortured with in lieu of incarceration: rehabilitation after his ordeals downtown, apparently. Guess it works in Eren’s favour that he paid some attention, ultimately, though at the time a hefty prison sentence seemed like heaven in comparison. “They wouldn’t let me in, at first.”

Eren’s eyebrows raise in genuine confusion and, perhaps, anger. “ _What?_ ”

“Eight hours,” Levi elaborates. “Eight hours and one distressed receptionist. Give or take.”

Eren grits his teeth so firmly that Levi hears it. _Yeah,_ he thinks. _Anger._

“What – _why–?_ ”

“Mikasa’s the only one listed as your next of kin,” Levi explains. “Our fault, really, but in my defence, I didn’t anticipate you dropping half dead for at least another, like, forty years or so.”

“… _F_ _uck,_ ” Eren mutters, fuming with himself. His cheeks are singed scarlet. “How did you…?”

“I had to go home and pull up _every_ piece of evidence that we have _some_ sort of relationship,” Levi continues, suddenly glad to have the whole drama off his chest. “Water bills, of all things. Bank statements.”

Levi watches as Eren sits in silence for a few moments, the tips of his ears turning an impressive shade of pink. He can feel the heat radiating from him and, admittedly a little panicked, he forces himself to proceed with his point.

“Don’t get worked up,” he orders first, and Eren shoots him a look that says _how can’t I?_ “Your blood pressure. They won’t let you go home if you have another episode.”

This seems to work, to Levi’s relief, and Eren closes his eyes and breathes deeply.

"Alright,” he says on an exhale, opening his eyes to look at Levi. “Alright, I’m good.”

“Okay,” Levi says, glad to hear it and trusting that Eren won’t lie to him about this sort of thing again. _That_ was a fun conversation. “Basically, we…” he sighs, undeniably uncomfortable. “We need to figure out how to go about changing our records so that, if anything happens to… one of us, the other has the priority and the _authority_ over… you know. All that… stuff.”

Eren blinks and nods. “Yeah,” he manages, eventually. His gaze peers out of the high window and over toward the skyline of town in the distance, apparently seeking out something in particular. “Yeah, I guess.”

Levi waits as Eren works through the implications in silence.

“…Quite quickly, probably,” he finishes, and Eren’s eyes fall shut in quiet defeat.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, I know.”

The existence of whatever it is that’s _wrong_ with Eren hadn’t quite settled its way into Levi’s version of reality yet. They don’t know, and the waiting list for the neurology specialists had sent Mikasa, in particular, spiralling with contempt and panic. Vaguely, the possibility that it was a fluke, was just a bizarre one-off, had nestled itself into the foundations of Levi’s better senses but, well. He can’t help but listen in when Hange speaks, when Onyankopon, another senior doctor, theorises with them. Intimidating words get thrown around that he can’t bring himself to tune out. Seizures, strokes, aneurysms. Blood clots. Hypoglycaemia. Epilepsy. Tumours. Cancer. He doesn’t know what half the words that come out of their mouths mean.

Eren does, though.

“We’ll sort something out when I’m home,” he says, unnaturally quiet; Levi had always considered Eren fearless and, honestly, borderline indestructible, as far as his physical wellness was concerned but, well. They’re here, aren’t they?

“Okay,” Levi says, nodding. “Which will be…?”

Eren, dragged back to reality with the insistence of the question, glowers in Levi’s direction. “Fucking yesterday, preferably,” he grumbles. Levi smiles.

“Tonight, actually,” a third voice chirps from across the room.

Onyankopon and Hange march meaningfully towards Eren’s designated space at the end of the room; Onyankopon’s soft smile and calm mannerisms remind Levi of a certain someone and it unnerves him, somewhat.

Hange is dressed in jeans and a loose blouse and Levi frowns at their casual dress which, presumably, Hange notices.

“Day off,” they explain. “Forced, mind you.”

Onyankopon hums. “You’ll work yourself to death,” he muses. “A corpse isn’t much good as a doctor.”

“I think _my_ corpse might have a few points to prove, actually, but an otherwise sound conclusion.”

“To _night_?” Eren repeats, his voice a little higher than usual. Levi spots the soft blush on his cheeks as he clears his throat.

"Mhm,” Hange hums. “We were waiting on your results from this morning to come back first, and all’s… the same as always, basically,” they continue, sighing a little. “You’ve stumped me, Eren. I’m impressed.”

“Hange would keep you here forever to poke and prod if they could,” Onyankopon states, chuckling lowly. Levi squints at the words, decisively not a fan of _that_ particular image. “But there isn’t much we can do for you, or vice versa, at this point.”

Eren breathes and falls dramatically against his pillow. “Thank _God,_ ” he groans, loudly, and Levi’s inclined to agree with the sentiment.

“Don’t get too excited,” Hange warns, and Levi’s ears perk up. “We’re moving your referral forward with as much persistence as we can afford. We don’t want to leave any stone unturned and there’s no telling how your body will react to another episode, should it occur. You haven’t seen the last of this place, I’m afraid.”

Eren opens his eyes and squints toward his colleague. “I _work_ here, Hanji,” he says, his bemusement clear. “I’ll be back on like, Monday, latest.”

Hange shakes their head softly and Levi watches as Eren’s mouth falls slightly agape. “Loathe though I am to say it… as your doctor, I can’t let you come back until we know more about what’s going on,” they look, admittedly, mournful. “The paperwork as both your practitioner _and_ your superior if something happened to you would be–”

“Killer,” Eren finishes. “Go figure.”

“Mhm,” Hange concedes, smiling an uncharacteristically gentle smile. “Go paint something.”

Levi feels admittedly shameful for having to mention it, but – “What about–?”

“We offer full sick pay,” Hange answers, knowingly, and Levi nods in understanding. “For up to a year.”

The silence that descends is chilling, and it strikes something in Levi’s gut that has him rising from his seat like a taut spring, snapping into place beside Eren’s bedside.

“A _year?_ He’s not going to need a _year.”_

This time, Onyankopon offers a look that screams _you poor things_ that makes Levi want to soar across the room and drag the doctor back through the window and toward the pavement. “We hope he won’t,” he says. “But you should understand the severity of sickness which Eren was brought to us with. His recovery is impressive, and promising,” he looks at Eren. “But, Mr Jaeger, coupled with the endless unknowns about your impairment… I have to tell you, the first few hours of having you on my table… had Hange not intervened, I would have almost certainly allowed you to…”

“Don’t say it,” Levi spits, his voice venomous. He spots Eren look up at him in his periphery but, right now, all he really sees is _red._ “Don’t you fucking dare.”

“Levi,” Hange speaks, and takes a step forward as if to move around the bed. He steps closer to Eren and places a firm hand on his shoulder.

Hange stops, luckily for them, and sighs softly. “We’re not trying to scare you,” they say, and Levi struggles to make out the sentence from the blood ringing in his ears. “Neither of you,” they proceed, throwing a fleeting glance toward Eren. “But I feel that the level of _sick_ that Eren truly was that night has been… understated, somewhat.”

“You _said_ he was completely fucking healthy,” Levi shouts, shameless. “Make your fucking mind up.”

“He _was,_ ” Hange confirms. “Is, even, as far as I can tell. It’s like there’s nothing wrong with him at all. Except, clearly, there _is._ And the fact that we don’t know what it _is_ yet, can’t _treat_ him… should Eren be brought to us in the same condition as last time, it concerns me that there won’t be a tremendous amount that we can do for him.”

“…Levi,” Eren murmurs quietly from beside him. Levi cannot look at him, but he feels the warmth of Eren’s hand coming to lie over the one that he has anchored on his shoulder.

He clenches his eyes tight and manages a strangled breath through his nose. “Can we go?” he asks, though it isn’t a question.

“Yes,” Hange says, and everything after that blurs meaninglessly, colourlessly, as if the world had stopped turning and Levi had fallen off.

***

"Daytime TV just isn’t what it used to be,” Eren sighs mournfully.

The last month had passed far quicker than he would have preferred, and, sat in his office, Levi feels both relieved and unnerved by the concrete finding that his life has been able to return to something vaguely familiar, albeit singed with a dark and threatening hue.

Levi hums down the phone. “How so?” he asks, conversationally, because this is the fourth time Eren has rang him in the last two hours and if it hadn’t already been a _moderate_ concern, the issue of his partners’ questionable sanity was beginning to tug at the peripheries of his mind.

“Well…” Eren begins, and Levi prepares himself for a tangent that doesn’t come. “Nobody _fights_ anymore.”

Levi frowns and rubs a tired hand over his tired face. “What… do you mean?”

“You know,” Eren proceeds and _no,_ Levi thinks, _I really, really don’t._ “Panel shows and, like, family dramas. I remember staying home from school as a kid and it was pure _violence._ Like, bodyguards splitting up crackheads threatening to kill their prostitute sister,” Eren pauses briefly before muttering, “Sorry, that was insensitive,” but continues, “Still. They all just talk diplomatically now. They cry, and hug, and stuff. It’s… really shit.”

“Have you considered giving Jean a call?” he suggests. “I think you’ll find his attempts at diplomacy fall short on you. Might spice up your day somewhat.”

“No,” Eren says, sounding disturbingly pensive. “No, I actually didn’t consider that. Not a terrible idea.”

Levi swallows loudly. “Eren,” he warns, and he hears him groan obnoxiously down the microphone.

“I’m _bored,_ ” he complains, and Levi isn’t afraid to admit that the childishness is glaringly unattractive on him. “Can’t you come home?”

“No,” Levi says, and feels surprisingly okay with it. “You’ve been stuck with me for the better part of a month now. Aren’t you sick of it?”

“…no,” Eren mumbles. Levi waits. “…a little, I guess, but I promise you, there is literally nothing better to do.”

“Don’t you have a portfolio to be working on?” he attempts, but feels admittedly wary about mentioning it.

“Not if I’m dead before the gallery, I don’t,” Eren grumbles moodily, predictably, and Levi has to take a minute to steady himself.

“You’re not going to die,” he says, impressed by the strength in his voice.

“…Sorry,” Eren apologises, and Levi nods, glad that they had avoided the issue successfully, again. He believes his own conviction, for the most part, anyway. Knows Eren does, too. “I know. I think. But still, it feels a little… wrong of me to be off sick from work and to still be working from home anyway.”

“Your boss literally told you to paint something,” Levi tries.

“Oh, you were present for that?” Eren asks, his voice deceivingly innocent. “Sorry, I thought you’d already traded yourself in for Lucifer himself at that point. I guess that happened later, then.”

“No offence, Eren, but you are literally the last person on this planet who I would take anger management related criticism from.”

“…Fair enough, then,” Eren concedes, and Levi finds himself smiling lightly.

The line falls silent for slightly too long and Levi realises, for the fourth time today, that Eren had ran out of things to say; a realisation that, a few weeks ago, he would have hesitated to believe was possible.

“I need to go,” Levi says, and feels odd for it, because _before_ , he would have wordlessly and guiltlessly hung up. He hears Eren sigh. “I’m sorry,” he manages. “But I have a lot to catch up on. Paint something, or draw something. Just, do _something_ , okay?”

“…Okay,” Eren whispers miserably, and Levi cringes, knows what he has to say, knows that Eren needs to hear it, sometimes, but knows that it still feels like he’s doing something wrong every time the words leave his mouth.

“I love you,” he speaks, quietly.

“…Thank you,” Eren replies and, satisfied, Levi hangs up.

He leans back into his chair and stretches against it, lifting his hands to tangle his fingers into the hair at the back of his head. His office is small, quaint, and he can hear the bustle of the café as it runs beneath him; the tall window in front of his desk allows warm sheets of light to bleed into the space. On the windowsill, there is a small vase of fresh daffodils, blooming for the first time, and he closes his eyes.

“Welcome back, _Bro_ ,” a reliably excitable voice booms from behind him.

“This your doing?” he asks Isabel, flicking his head toward the flowers. Isabel rolls her eyes.

“No, it was Lobov,” she fires at him, and he fixes her with a meaningful glare. “Don’t ask stupid questions, then.”

“I hate daffodils,” Levi squares, raising his eyebrows. “They’re ugly.”

“ _You’re_ ugly,” Isabel proceeds, stepping inside and removing her coat. She throws it against the red loveseat by the wall nearest to her, and Levi eyes it bitterly. “Eren fancied _me,_ first, you know.”

“Oh, really?” he questions. “For some reason, I was under the impression that you’re not exactly his type.”

“That’s biphobic, first of all,” she says, and Levi grins despite himself, intrigued. She stands in the middle of the room, powerful, tying her apron behind her back. “Stop erasing his bisexuality, Levi, it’s nasty. Second of all, I’m everybody’s type.”

“I must have missed that memo,” he says. “You are literally the furthest thing from my type.”

“You’re broken,” she sighs, her eyes closed blissfully. “I feel sorry for you, really. I’m a diamond.”

“You’re a lump of coal, if ever I saw one.”

She snaps her eyes open and glares before finding her resolve and placing a firm hand on her hip. “At least I’m _useful_ , then,” she retorts, and, in fairness, Levi can’t argue with that.

“That’s up for debate,” a new voice speaks from the doorway, and Levi sighs in quiet relief.

“Thank God you’re here,” he exclaims. “Will you take her away from me, please?”

“Consider it done,” Farlan promises, ducking beneath the doorframe in order to enter the room, the _giraffe._ He sits on the loveseat, his elbows on his knees.

“First, though,” Farlan starts, and Levi waits for him to carry on. “How’re you doing?”

Levi frowns. “I’m fine?”

Farlan swallows and Levi watches wearily as Isabel moves to sit beside him. “You know what he meant,” she says, and, actually, heading home to watch Loose Ladies with Eren doesn’t sound all that terrible anymore.

“No, I don’t.”

Farlan and Isabel share a look that makes Levi’s skin crawl.

“Is Eren…” Farlan continues, and Levi closes his eyes.

He hadn’t had chance to explain his absence in great detail since everything kicked off. He’d seen their incessant texts, emails, voicemails; had replied humbly, found cover where needed, and answered questions shortly where he felt they were reasonable. He should have anticipated this, still. Nothing’s ever enough.

“Alive?” Levi asks, his expression bored. “Yes. Thank you for asking.”

“Bro…” Isabel sighs quietly, and Levi blanches at her.

“What is it that you want me to say, exactly?”

“Nothing,” Farlan lies, the bastard, but Levi allows him to carry on regardless. “We’re just worried about you. And Eren, but, you, mostly. I can’t even _imagine_ –”

“Then _don’t,_ ” Levi snaps. “Don’t imagine anything. It’s none of your business.”

The pair of them look at him with such wide, sad eyes that he genuinely considers smashing his nice big window through and legging it downtown for some _peace_ , which, all things considered, says a _lot._

Levi leans back in his chair instead, suddenly feeling his age and then some.

“He’s fine,” he says, and it’s true. “Nothing’s happened since the first time. His MRI’s next week, and then we’ll either know more or we can start to assume it was a fluke. Either way, he’s fine, _I’m_ fine, and I was quite looking forward to being out of the house and getting some damn work done but, actually, right now, another month’s leave sounds fucking delightful.”

The tense silence that follows is interrupted by the sound of Levi’s phone vibrating loudly against the desk and he forces himself to turn calmly and answer it.

“Hello?” he greets, his voice low, and he knows what’s coming.

“I need you to come home,” Eren says, though his voice is strikingly serious; it makes Levi’s stomach churn, his chest sting.

“What’s happened?” he asks, hoping he doesn’t sound as panicked as he is.

“Well, nothing,” Eren says. “I just need you to come home, okay? I promise I’ll leave you alone tomorrow. I promise.”

“Eren…” Levi breathes in a drained way that has become frustratingly familiar.

“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t mean it.”

“Yes,” Levi corrects. “Yes, actually, you would.”

“Alright,” Eren admits though, Levi has to acknowledge, his voice is taut and strained in a way it hasn’t sounded in quite some time, if ever, and his worry persists. “Alright, but please. This time, please.”

“It’s my first day back,” Levi states, factually.

“I know,” Eren says. “I know, it’s just bad timing, but, Levi, I really feel like I need to talk to you about something.”

At this, Levi falters a little because nothing good ever comes from Eren saying they need to talk, nothing at all. He swallows thickly.

“You can’t tell me now?” he tries, a little desperate, and a little disturbed by his own cowardice.

“…Not really,” Eren mumbles and the misery in his voice is _painful_ to hear, physically agonising.

“…Alright,” Levi says. “Alright. I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

Levi blinks a few times and the wariness he had started the day with is now glaring and insurmountable. “I’ll try,” he reiterates, and hangs up.

He turns his chair slowly to face Isabel and Farlan who share a disgustingly crestfallen expression.

“So,” Levi starts, “That’s how things are.”

He watches as his friends, a term he still feels uneasy about throwing around, swallow loudly and breathe a few times in synchronisation as they process whatever they think they had just witnessed.

“He sounds…” Farlan starts, tentatively.

“…So _sad,_ ” Isabel finishes, and Levi meets her eyes across the room.

It’s difficult, because before now, Eren really _had_ been fine. Exceptional, almost, boredom and shocking lack of work ethic aside. Their days had been spent doing housework, mostly, Levi getting the deep cleaning done that they hadn’t been able to while Eren was in hospital, and Eren taking a newfound liking to gardening, ringing Armin up at all hours with all sorts of botany related inquiries. He hadn’t painted, hadn’t set foot in the spare room at all, in fact, as far as Levi could tell, but aside from that, relative normality seemed well within their grasps.

“He’s been fine up till now,” Levi levels. “He’s just _bored_ , the manipulative shit.”

“You can’t blame him,” Farlan says, and Levi shoots daggers in his direction. “I’d like to see how you’d cope under house arrest.”

“He is not under house arrest,” Levi corrects. “He’s just off _work,_ for fuck’s sake. There is nothing stopping him from leaving the house and, frankly, there’s not a force on this Earth that could stop him if that’s what he wanted to do.”

“…That’s odd, then,” Isabel speaks, frustratingly gentle. “That he doesn’t want to.”

Levi, admittedly, had not considered this. Aside from work and necessary trips like shopping, it wasn’t uncommon for Eren to leave the house in the morning and not return until the late (or early) hours of the evening; he’d be at the gym with Mikasa, or he’d pester Armin at the library he works at. He’d go for dinner with Sasha, or for drinks with Connie, or go out of his way to strike up a debate with Jean that Levi would be hearing the results of for days afterward. Despite his recent reservations about his job, sometimes, if he was bored enough, Levi would return home on Eren’s days off to find a lazily scribbled note explaining that he had gone to the hospital to check in on his favourite patients. Since his return home, though, Eren hadn’t left the house unless accompanied by Levi, and the only other person he had seen was Mikasa; if Levi was honest, even that wasn’t entirely by choice.

“I’m not going to force him to go out,” Levi breathes, eventually, though now that the thought is there, he feels irked by his own ignorance.

“You don’t have to force him,” Farlan suggests. “Go with him, or something – have you actually suggested it to him _at all_?”

Levi falters and turns to look out of the window. “…No.”

“You’re the _worst,_ ” Isabel groans. “Actually the worst _ever._ ”

“You go and babysit him if you care so fucking much,” Levi spits, harshly, and he thinks he should know better by now than to make such empty suggestions when it comes to Isabel. She rises and begins untying her apron, grinning widely.

“Alright,” she says. “I will.”

Levi stares at her for a prolonged moment and thinks, actually, it doesn’t sound like all that bad of an idea, except–

“Sounds good,” Farlan says, happily. “I’ll cover you. I only dropped in to see this fucking asshole, anyway. I’m free.”

The urge to argue is powerful, and he considers his options carefully for a few minutes too long, perhaps. A stream of sunlight catches the daffodils on the windowsill and the room erupts into a warm and fiery yellow. He sighs.

“Alright,” he says, and tries to ignore Isabel’s giddy, animalistic noises from behind him. “Go, see what difference it makes.”

“If that’s a challenge, then you should know better, Levi,” Isabel warns, and the sound of Farlan’s soft laughter alleviates his persistent tenseness marginally.

“Yeah, well,” he grumbles, but turns to face his computer and flicks the mouse so that the screen lights up. “I’ve got too much _mess_ to clean up to be going home at this point, anyway. Why the hell did I pay for your admin training if you still insist on making a spreadsheet look like a child’s fucking shopping list?”

He’s lying, honestly. He scrolls down an Excel spreadsheet and tries desperately to find a mistake, _can’t_ , aside from one small typo that reads ‘mochiattay’ instead of ‘macchiato.’ He corrects it silently.

“You’re full of shit,” Isabel says, haughtily, and when Levi looks, she’s stood over him with her palm outstretched. He eyes it, cautiously.

“ _Keys_ , idiot,” she barks, and Levi frowns.

“You could just _knock,_ ” he suggests, and she rolls her eyes as if she had never heard something so ridiculous in her life.

“He might not let me in,” she counters. “This way he doesn’t have time to think of a counterattack.”

Levi blinks and, slowly, reaches into his trouser pocket, untangling the house keys from his car key, and hands them to her. She beams, spinning away dramatically and heading towards the door. Levi turns suddenly.

“Tell him…” he starts, and sighs, closing his eyes briefly. “Tell him I was too busy, or something. That I’ll be home later. And…” he pauses thoughtfully. “Tell him I’ll pick food up on the way home.”

Isabel stops and tilts her head, her smile taking up her whole expression. “His favourite, right?”

Levi, worn and perhaps slightly loathe to be sending Isabel in his place, nods softly. “Yes.”

“Cute,” Farlan chirps, and Levi rounds on him.

“Get to fucking work,” he demands. He listens to the sound of Isabel’s hearty giggles fading as she makes her way down the stairs. He thinks, begrudgingly, of daffodils.

***

He sits in the driveway for what feels like hours.

He’s tired, in a satisfying way; there’s not an ounce of restlessness left in him, finally, and his afternoon was impressively productive with minimal upsets from downstairs, compared to usual. He had stayed slightly later than intended, dusting his office down as his colleagues had neglected to do in his absence, the _scruffs,_ and ordinarily he’d be looking forward to getting home, eating with Eren, watching Eren watch TV, _sleeping_ with Eren.

Except he doesn’t feel that this time, and it makes his head ache. His day, after Isabel left, had reminded him of the mundaneness of his life, of the world and how it turns and turns and _turns_. He likes it, he realises, belatedly. Is glad to be back at work, to be back with his _friends,_ of all things, and he knows, dimly, that that degree of solidity, of familiarity, won’t be there anymore when he enters his home– _their_ home.

He shifts and acknowledges the bag of food in the passenger seat, knows it’s starting to cool, and he sighs longingly, guiltily, for the version of his life _before;_ wants it _back,_ fiercely and impatiently.

He looks up at the house and notices a light in the top window above the front door; he leans forward, inspecting it. Two shadows dance around each other, seemingly, and he swallows before picking up the bag to his side and heading homeward.

He kicks his shoes off in the hallway and can hear loud chattering drift down the staircase; he closes his eyes and pretends, for a moment, that it’s Eren and Armin or Eren and Connie, _Sasha,_ and that their lives remain unchanged, is disturbed to discover that he misses the raucous energy and head-splitting noise of Eren and his friends. _Laughter,_ he recalls, and his breath stammers. _It’s called laughter, you heartless, heartless man._

Silently, he makes his way up the staircase and heads toward the spare room, trying not to think about how it had remained empty, and the unknown reasons _why,_ before tonight.

The door is ajar, and he watches as Eren and Isabel, their backs to him, sweep brushes along two large easels placed in front of the window across from him. He can’t see what they’re working on, but he can see that the room is littered with newspapers, and that a large bed sheet covers the floor, stained with months-worth of spilled paint. Eren laughs at something that Isabel says, and Levi coughs quietly.

They turn and the double sets of bright, green eyes has him feeling decisively weak.

“Levi!” Isabel greets him, her teeth bared in a warm smile. “We were starting to think you’d got lost.”

Eren grins. “I told you, he was on a date with the cashier from the hospital,” he jokes, and Isabel laughs loudly.

“Levi got lucky bagging _you,”_ she counters. “There’s literally no hope for him aside from that.”

“Your food’s getting cold,” he says, lifting the bag in his hands.

“Donburi?” Eren inquires lightly. Levi nods, feels like if he could, he’d keep that clumsy, boisterous grin on Eren’s face forever. “You’re the best.”

Isabel hums. “Did you–”

“Yes,” Levi interrupts, because he knew Isabel would still be here – she’s hard to get rid of at the best of times – and he had the foresight to grab her some noodles.

“Sweet,” she mutters, and turns fully toward him. She’s wearing an absurdly large white t-shirt that falls to her knees and, apparently, nothing else. It’s covered in splodges of paint, all colours, and Levi glowers at it.

“I said she could keep it,” Eren says knowingly. “Don’t worry, it’s not going to add to your laundry pile.”

This eases Levi’s concerns somewhat.

“Alright,” he says, and steps out of the way so that Isabel can make her way to the bathroom.

Eren, by comparison, carefully removes his own t-shirt, throwing it onto an unidentifiable pile of _stuff_ in the corner of the room and stepping toward the cabinet; he pulls out a bottle of alcohol, pouring it over a bowl and dipping his hands in, washing them thoroughly, before drying them off on a bleach-stained towel.

Levi regards him for a long moment, and it settles within him that Eren truly might be fine, after all. He’s tall, always has been, but the sturdiness with which he now stands compared to _before_ is admittedly surprising; his posture is impressive and, although he had been muscular before, his back, in particular, is strikingly defined where Levi does not remember it being.

“You been buffing out without me knowing or something?” Levi asks eventually when Eren turns to look at him. He has some small, vein-like trickles of dried red paint beneath his right eye that, confusingly, makes Levi’s head pound a little. “Sneaking to the gym?”

His hair is pulled up into a bun, but he uses his wrist to push a loose strand back. He’s smiling. “No,” he answers. “Why? Like what you see?”

Levi rolls his eyes despite the dull ache in the back of his skull. “Don’t ask stupid questions,” he manages, but Eren’s smile grows, _erupts,_ at the unspoken words.

“On a separate note,” Eren steps forward, stops directly in front of him. “I cannot fucking believe you sent me a babysitter.”

Levi looks up at the figure in front of him, _so fucking tall._ “I could just as easily have had _you_ babysit _her,_ ” he responds, and Eren rolls his eyes. “I was busy, anyway.”

“Sure,” Eren says, and places a large hand on Levi’s cheek, tangles his fingers in the black curtains that fall from his left side. He’s staring at him, a little invasively, and Levi blinks softly a few times. _He’s fine,_ he thinks, a mantra, _he’s going to be fine._

“What–” he begins, but has to clear his throat – Eren, smarter than he looks, does not react to Levi being, unfortunately, a little flustered. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

At the words, Eren breathes deeply, a sad sort of sigh; his eyes are fixated in place where his fingers meet Levi’s scalp, while Levi’s scan his partners’ features imploringly and with a sense of utter adoration he’d almost forgotten he has the capacity to possess.

“Don’t…” Eren starts, and then sighs lightly. “Don’t worry about it. After dinner?”

Levi opens his mouth to protest, but the bathroom door slams from behind him and he grimaces noticeably.

“Yes, _after dinner,_ ” Isabel yells as she skirts around the banister and dashes downstairs. “I’m fucking starving. Eren’s a terrible host.”

“Or you’re a terrible babysitter,” Eren calls, leaning over Levi to peer down the stairs so that Levi’s cheek is pressed lightly against his chest. He hears, _feels,_ Eren’s low chuckle, can hear his heart beating loudly and boldly and comfortingly. He feels a kiss placed tentatively against the top of his head and he forces his gaze upward, the pull insuperable; he places his free hand against Eren’s nape, pulls him down forcefully, kisses his lips because it doesn’t matter how much their lives change, how uncertain things can get – this is his constant, he thinks, has been since the first time, will be till the last, Eren’s lips and Eren’s smile and Eren’s heart beating against his.

Eren kisses him back wholly and warmly, a little _eagerly,_ and Levi finds a soft and barely audible moan stifle its way between his and Eren’s lips, wants Eren to feel it, wants, _wants._

“Can you guys fucking wait like, forty-five minutes?” Isabel’s voice yells from downstairs and Levi pulls his head back instinctively; Eren presses their foreheads together, smiling wide, his eyes seeming huge.

“I’ve missed this,” Eren whispers, barely even there, and it forces a stab of something like guilt to pierce deep within him.

He had not been avoiding Eren; if anything, he’d had been unshakably glued to his side from the second his eyes opened that morning in the hospital. He’d be lying, though, if the permanent proximity to him didn’t shake something loose inside him, didn’t make him uneasy and nervous where his life with Eren typically felt reliable and _strong._

This is normal, he thinks, fleetingly. Without the distance of work and friends and _life,_ it’s normal for him to grow closer and further from Eren simultaneously, makes sense in his brain, somehow; is glad, so fucking glad, to have this _back_.

“Hello?!” Isabel bellows from below them, and Eren grins in amusement, pushing past him.

Levi watches the figure as it leaves him; watches the muscles in Eren’s back churn with movement and power and _life._

***

“Isabel,” Levi whispers, a little urgently, as she makes her way out of the front door and towards her car.

She turns, standing casually in the middle of the darkened driveway, while Levi watches her from the front door, keeping one hand anchored on the handle. She regards him innocently and tilts her head inquisitively.

“How did you…” Levi begins and wants to literally knock himself out for having to ask the question at all. “How’d you get him to paint?” he manages, squinting his eyes accusingly at his friend.

She hums and takes some steps toward him so that she can lower her voice, and he’s grateful for her impressive intuition. “Well,” she whispers, and Levi leans in. “He already was, is the thing. When I got here, I mean.”

Levi sighs, is a little irritated that she couldn’t provide him with some higher social knowledge that he doesn’t, has never, had access to. “I did _tell_ him to,” he mutters.

“ _There_ you go,” Isabel encourages, louder, and smacks her palm harshly against Levi’s shoulder. He regards her and squints his eyes angrily. “Some gentle encouragement goes a long way, apparently.” She pauses and looks toward the yellow light that gleams softly out of the living room windows, blinds closed, and he knows she’s looking towards Eren. “He loves you, Levi,” she breathes, a little morbidly for his liking but, well. She knows him, after all. “He really does.”

Levi’s lips twitch in discomfort and he regards his friend carefully.

“I know that,” he grits, irritated. She turns her eyes back towards him, looking _annoyed,_ and he watches as her chin bulges in that particular way that means she wants him to fucking listen to her, _for once._

“I’m being serious,” she says, the words coming out gritty and unnatural. “He loves you. Trust in that, a little. Trust in him… and in _us,_ ” she says the final word on a soft exhale that doesn’t make immediate sense in Levi’s brain. “Trust in us. If you need the time off, we’ve got you. Farlan and I. He _does_ seem healthy, I’ll give you that,” she sighs, long and tired, in a way that really doesn’t suit her. “But… I can see why you’re on edge. Something isn’t right. I don’t know what it is, but…” she shrugs. “He’ll tell you, I’m sure, if he even knows himself. Don’t kill yourself about it.”

Levi waits for a moment before speaking again. “Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah, he will.”

“Great,” Isabel beams. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He stands still as her car pulls out of the driveway, waits until the glares of her headlights are long gone before he opens the door and steps back into his hallway, welcomes the warmth of it, the smell of it, and creeps into the living room.

Eren is sprawled languidly across the sofa opposite the TV, a sage coloured blanket draped over his lower half, his right arm holding the weight of his head. His casual expression upon Levi’s entrance is comforting, and Levi continues across the space.

They’re wearing matching grey joggers, comfy and admittedly worn where Eren is concerned; Levi has taken the liberty of pulling on a black t-shirt that he wears almost exclusively for bed, where Eren’s torso remains bare. He moves toward the half of the sofa where Eren’s legs are draped and he lifts them, instinctively, so that Levi can sit; the limbs fall back over his lap as if they belong there.

They sit in silence for a while, the television flickering and lighting the room in various shades and hues until Eren sighs dramatically and tilts his chin in Levi’s direction. 

“How was work?” he asks, and Levi shrugs.

“Quiet,” he admits. “For the most part. I didn’t have to don an apron, at all, so that was nice.”

Eren hums and looks back toward the TV. “That’s good, then,” he says, and Levi spots the way he chews the inside of his lip. “I’m sorry if I pestered you.”

“You didn’t pester me,” he reassures. “I’m… sorry I couldn’t come home.”

“It’s okay,” Eren says quickly. “I’m glad you sent Isabel instead. It cleared my mind a little.”

Levi stiffens noticeably at the inclination toward whatever it is that they haven’t yet spoken about and, in turn, Eren’s legs shift with the newfound discomfort.

“Don’t… panic, or anything,” Eren continues, tilting so that the back of his head leans against the armrest; Levi is, decisively, panicking. “Can we talk? Now?”

Levi wants so desperately to say no. _So_ desperately. He can’t, though, not _reasonably,_ “Of course,” he says, and forces his head to turn in Eren’s direction, likes the way Eren’s cheekbones raise in muffled pride.

Eren appears to take a moment to gather himself before his mouth opens. Levi doesn’t miss the way his eyes stay fixed on the ceiling.

“I… things feel different, and have done, for a while now,” he begins, and Levi, honestly, has to prepare himself for Eren’s sudden but arguably reasonable departure from his life. He grinds his teeth but, for the first time _ever,_ Levi considers, Eren doesn’t address it. “It isn’t you. You haven’t done anything wrong – honestly, it all started with Sasha.”

Levi noticeably blanches, nearly chokes on his own breath.

“What the _hell?_ ” Levi hisses, legitimately shocked and marginally disturbed. Eren lifts his head and his eyes blow wide, quickly placing his arm over Levi’s across the back of the sofa cushions.

“Oh, my _God,_ no, _no,_ nothing like that,” Eren stutters, startled, and Levi relaxes slightly, feels both relieved and guilty for even thinking along those lines. “No, _no,_ it’s just…”

The silence that arrives abruptly in the middle of Eren’s sentence stretches like the lives before them. Levi doesn’t move, doesn’t take his eyes off Eren for even a second, doesn’t _want_ to.

Eventually, Eren’s eyes go hard, set sternly, and his gaze falls onto Levi with a sense of determination that Levi _dreads._ “Will you come upstairs with me?” he speaks, his voice deceptively nervous compared to the strength behind his expression. “I think it’d be easier to show you.”

Levi’s jaw refuses to untense – he doesn’t think he’d be able to speak if he tried – so he just nods, wordlessly, and stands on cue when Eren’s knees lift off of him.

It startles him when Eren’s hand grasps at his own halfway up the staircase, Eren leading the way, but he finds himself holding on anyway, his thumb intuitively grazing over the soft skin of Eren’s wrist. Eren’s fingers are firm, frankly a little painful, but he doesn’t let go.

They reach the spare room and Eren flicks the light on, abandoning his grip on Levi’s hand, before stepping into the centre of the small space and standing with his hands on his hips, his back to Levi. The two easels that him and Isabel had been working on when Levi got home are still in place, either side of the slim window, but the shapes on them are indiscernible to Levi’s eyes.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” he says, after an uncomfortable few minutes pass.

“Nothing,” Eren answers, and his voice sounds _choked,_ downright fearful, like something invisible has a violent hold on him. His shoulders roll in circles, his hands flexing at his sides. “I just… this could go one of two ways,” he mutters, his voice foreign in juxtaposition to what Levi is _used_ to hearing.

Levi waits.

“… You’re either going to think I’m crazy or, well…” Eren continues before halting again and Levi feels ashamed when the surge of impatience within him does not tamper.

“Or _what_ , Eren?” Levi barks, his hand coming to rest against the doorframe as if he’s bored when, realistically, he is _far_ from it; yearns to be, though.

Eren moves toward the right side of the room and tugs on a wide, cream tinted sheet that reveals a wall of white canvasses with vague pencil marks covering them. Eren’s fingers bend inward, summoning him, and Levi, intrigued, follows the order.

“What do you think this is?” Eren asks, nodding toward a particular sketch near the window. Levi studies it.

It’s him, _that’s_ clear, at least; it’s his hair and his general facial structure – Eren had never failed to capture it as if by photograph – except there’s a thick bandage over his right eye and a deep scar that trails its way along his profile. Levi scans the portrait and discovers that, lower down, his arm is present, though only two fingers protrude from his knuckles.

“Do I need to be concerned?” he asks, eventually, his brows furrowing. He means the question, but Eren’s disappointment is difficult to ignore when he turns on the spot so that he is facing Levi. Levi doesn’t look at him. He has a headache.

Eren stares after him for a while before grumbling to himself quietly and then raises his arm to point towards a canvas in the middle of the wall. Levi follows his direction obediently and tries to discern the shapes of what is, apparently, a face; large and menacing, taking up the entire block. Its eyes are deep-set, covered in dark shadows, and, where its lips should be, there are the jagged lines of square teeth, right up to the jawbone. Levi’s head throbs incessantly, painfully, stubbornly, and he blinks a few times.

“Eren…” he says, that fucking _tone_ slipping into his voice again that he swears had not been there until Eren’s first episode. It’s a warning, he knows, somehow, a powerful _foreboding,_ that only Eren brings out of him. He lifts his hand to rub at his temples.

“Last one,” Eren promises, and places his hands firmly on Levi’s shoulders, moving his whole body with sheer force to gaze upon a large canvas on the wall next to the door.

It’s what looks like a set of wings within a bold crest, of sorts; one side half shaded in grey and the other left glaringly white, untouched; they overlap, don’t seem to meet entirely where they should do, jarring, the white taking precedent, authority, over the grey. _Blue,_ something in Levi’s periphery bellows. _It’s blue, idiot,_ it repeats, and Levi keels over.

He feels out of breath and he has to dig his palms into his knees just to hold himself upright. He feels Eren’s palm rubbing circles into his spine, wants to shrug him off but can’t, leans into the touch a little, the warmth of it. He feels indescribably claustrophobic.

“You know it, right?” Eren beams, sounding far too fucking excited for Levi’s tastes, sounds downright _giddy_ , and the urge to shrug him off entirely is _powerful,_ damn near unavoidable, except his head feels like it might split open and–

Eren kneels in front of him and his eyes shine green and strong. He places a large hand on Levi’s cheek and he’s _grinning, damn it,_ he looks fucking _ecstatic_ , his teeth spread wide across his jaw and he looks like that – that _thing_ that Eren had thrust into his line of vision moments ago, that _monster,_ and Levi feels it when his own pupils glare over with a strike of instinct that he does not, will never, perhaps, understand.

“Eren…” he groans, again, forcing his eyes shut and slamming a palm against his forehead. “I need–”

“Right,” Eren breathes, sounding far more human than he looked a moment ago, and Levi feels a deep pressure where his hands meet his shoulders, _knows_ that Eren has begun guiding him toward the bedroom, collapses needily into the confines of their bed and feels the heat of Eren’s bare chest as it presses against his left side, like they do every night, every night since the first night, will do every night until the _last,_ but the distance between them has never seemed more expansive.

“I’m so sorry,” Eren whimpers into his shoulder and Levi opens his eyes to the pitch-black of night. “I’m so sorry, Levi, but I’m so glad – so _glad_ , you have no idea.”

Except, Levi isn’t glad. He thinks it may be impossible for him to feel _further_ from glad.

He falls asleep to the sound of Eren’s soft and levelled breathing beside his ear, but it is muffled, he thinks; faraway, like a fragile and ragged white string connecting _now_ to the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot describe how hard I found writing this oh my god
> 
> Thank you for reading!! Further to my last A/N I just want everyone to know that I am not some sort of preachy Ereri-Anti or anything like that, I have my views and felt they were important just for the benefit of some minor reader but for future reference I have no qualms with whatever it is that /you/ prefer to ship, or in what context, in most cases! I honestly just want to write and provide some enjoyment given the world is currently an utter mess :)
> 
> Any kudos and comments are so appreciated! Thank you for reading this far <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> //Time-wise, I have decided that the events of AOT take place in the incredibly distant past, and that other cataclysmic events/natural disasters meant that technological advancements were lost some time between the events of AOT and the present day – honestly just because I’m too lazy and too much of a perfectionist to rewrite thousands of years of history for the consistency of this universe lol sorry!!
> 
> \- TW sex (i know the work is rated explicit for this but just a heads up anyway!)
> 
> \- TW mild mentions of self-harm.

The library reminds Eren of a fiery adolescence.

It reminds him of summer days spent on trains, the sun high, countryside and cityscapes blurring into indiscernible visions of the lives of people they had never met; farmers and bankers and children, running through fields or running along canals or running between forests of commuting legs, _running_ , somewhere, anywhere, everywhere.

It reminds him of the first time he and Armin planned a trip to the city they now call home. It was at Eren’s insistence, before Mikasa was a part of his life at all; he had knocked on Armin’s front door with such ferocity that his grandfather had threatened to get Eren’s mother on the phone, but that did not deter him. He had told Armin that they were going to go into the city because Eren’s mother had said it was too big for him; he had scavenged all of his spends into his backpack, and they were _going._

Armin had hesitated, and fortunately so; Eren had not thought as far ahead as train tickets and journey planning and packed lunches and emergency contacts. He had neglected to consider life beyond getting there. Armin always considers these things.

With Armin’s grandfather as their humble chauffeur, their first stop was the university, because Armin had found a brochure that boasted its world-renowned facilities and award-winning research, and the second largest library in this part of the world.

It was huge, and it does not feel any less so now that Eren stands before it again. It looks marble, cosmic; a threatening and looming palace, far, far above him, intricate details carved into the infrastructure. It epitomises art and history and philosophy and it breathes with each soft gust of wind, alive and omniscient.

Eren doesn’t remember ever actually setting foot in the place when he was studying for his nursing qualifications. He was fortunate to be computer literate enough that almost any article or resource he needed, he could find on some website or database or another, and most of his work was practical, anyway. Honestly, the place intimidated him, a little, though he would not admit that to anyone else. Levi, maybe. He might have mentioned it to Levi, once.

When Armin secured a job here, though, things seemed to change. He’d find himself here on a whim most weeks, mithering him and carrying stacks of books and files in assistance while they spoke. Now, it feels familiar, but in a way that makes his blood _boil,_ and he can’t wait to be back outside before he’s even entered.

He marches through the courtyard, forcing his way through the revolving doors gracelessly, but _meaningfully_ , knows he has a face like thunder but frankly he _feels_ like thunder right now, feels like if he took one wrong breath he might explode and take the whole place down with him.

He makes his way up numerous grand and spiralling staircases in lieu of the elevators because he suspects that if he stops moving, he may never move again.

He sees Armin before Armin sees him, just the back of a slight blonde head nodding enthusiastically, clearly in the middle of a passionate conversation with some student or some tourist – Eren can never tell the difference, isn’t tuned in enough to university life anymore; perhaps never _had_ been, outside of clubs and bars and the union – and when he’s noticed, he feels guilt swell in his abdomen at his friend’s ecstatic expression, the way his eyes widen and his teeth seem to take up his whole face in sheer glee.

“Eren!” he calls, offering an apologetic glance to the young woman he had been talking to and scurrying over until they stand a metre apart from one another. Eren’s chest heaves, and he’s aware of it, knows he looks like an asshole, but he can’t force a smile this time, doesn’t even try.

“Hi,” he says, and doesn’t miss the way the light in Armin’s eyes dims.

“Hey,” he replies, shuffling the books he holds against his chest so that he can stand more comfortably. His smile is still present, but it looks tense, Eren thinks; he stifles his remorse at the revelation.

“When do you get off?” Eren asks pointedly. Armin’s expression pinches into something like worry, and Eren’s eyeline drifts to the reception area in front of them, looking at nothing in particular but pointedly _not_ looking at Armin for a moment too long.

“Half an hour,” Armin answers. “Is everything ok–?”

Eren’s eyes snap back towards his friend. “Do you even have to _ask?_ ” he interrupts, _harsh_ , and Armin sighs quietly, his fingers caressing the books in his arms with all the tenderness of a lover.

“I guess not,” he says, shuffling his feet. He looks off to the side and chews his bottom lip. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,” he continues, and Eren can’t help but furrow his brows in confusion. “I know your appointment was yesterday, but things have been hectic here, with finals and stuff, and I figured maybe you’d appreciate the space, what with Mikasa and Levi and–”

Eren’s jaw tenses, his lips pursed and his eyes blinking a little too aggressively to be casual, and trust Armin to pick up on all of that. Trust Armin.

He stops his waffling and stands a little taller.

“Have you… have you two had a fight?” he inquires, quite innocently, but it makes Eren want to drop-kick the shelves of books to his side sign-posted ‘ _Comparative Contemporary Environmental Policy A – J’_ and fuck the whole place up.

They hadn’t had a fight, not really – not like how they _can_ have a fight, nowhere near. But it was _close_ , so close, and had been snowballing over the course of the last week with a tension so _alive_ that Eren could feel it, physically _feel it_ , every time him and Levi were in the same room. It feels like static, like white noise, like pins and needles splintering over his whole body.

“I suppose,” he offers in lieu of an explanation, because he feels like he doesn’t have the time, just wants to drag Armin through the city and rant aimlessly like he used to when they were kids, when his problems felt so huge but were all so _small._

“Okay,” Armin breathes, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ll be out as soon as I can – do you want to wait here or–?”

“I’ll wait outside,” Eren declares, nodding at his friend and turning on his heels back toward the staircase he had just ascended.

***

They had stalked wordlessly towards the canal, Armin trailing a few paces behind him. Now, sat by the bank with their legs dangling over the still water below, the sky a warm and invasive orange, illuminating the buildings around them like a blazing prison, Eren still can’t find the words he felt so _determinedly_ that only Armin should hear.

"So,” his friend begins, and Eren breathes, his eyes fixated on the water. “You mind if I smoke?”

Eren snaps his head toward him and gapes, his eyes bulging. “You what?”

“I started up again,” he admits, shrugging one shoulder. Their first year of university had hit Armin hard; sweet, little Armin, who had never drank in his life, had got swept up in the hooliganism of freshers’ week so aggressively that even Eren had struggled to keep up with him and, while he let the party life go almost as soon as classes started, a moderate nicotine addiction developed without catching Eren’s attention at all. He’d quit halfway through their second year.

“Why the hell have you started that again?”

“I don’t know. Stress, I guess, or maybe I’m just a bigger idiot than anybody gives me credit for.”

Eren, though still seething with the aftermath of his life in general, manages a laugh so loud that Armin actually flinches.

“I’m serious,” his friend says, though Eren can barely make out the words through the bellow of his own hearty giggles. “I’m dumb.”

Struggling to breathe, Eren clutches the concrete edge of the bank on which they perch. Armin has a cigarette balanced between two slender fingers, halfway to his mouth, his head dipped toward Eren in genuine bewilderment.

“You must have an ulterior motive,” he manages, eventually, shaking his head and grinning. “There’s no way _you’re_ dumb enough to fall into that physical and financial drain _again_.”

Armin sighs for a long time and gazes back toward the water, his expression pensive, placing the cigarette between his lips and raising a hand to light it. “If I’m honest,” he begins, taking a drag and exhaling a large plume of smoke above them. “I love my job, but I’ve noticed that smokers get like five extra breaks throughout the day where I’d usually get one half hour. My lungs seem a worthy sacrifice. Finals season is _hell_.”

Eren laughs once (a bark, really), and leans back on his arms, his palms against the pavement. He revels, maliciously, in the knowledge that Levi would be complaining at him right now for his lack of care where his cleanliness is concerned. He drags a fingernail through a muddy groove in the concrete petulantly.

Their silence allows for the sounds of distant traffic to be heard, Eren gazing around lazily and Armin smoking – despite his explanation, Eren’s brain is still in a maimed state of _what in the fuck? –_ and it takes a few minutes before Armin speaks again.

“I’m sorry if you don’t want to talk about it,” he says, rubbing a free hand along the shaved hair at the back of his head. Eren misses his bob, slightly. “But obviously, I’m a little worried – did anything come up in the MRI?”

Eren flinches at the question because he had honestly expected the interrogation to be Levi-centric. He pauses.

“…Nothing,” he answers quietly, still unnerved.

“Oh,” Armin responds. “That’s… strange.”

“No shit,” Eren retorts, sick to death of being ‘sick,’ potentially, to death. He shakes his shoulders, breathing through his words. “I’m fit as a fiddle, apparently. I’ll probably be back at work soon.”

Armin leans forward, an elbow on his knee, and eyes Eren with that manipulatively innocent look that he _knows_ is targeted suspicion. “That’s good, though, isn’t it?”

Eren considers the question. _Yes,_ he supposes, it’s great. He had been surprised to discover that he misses his job, misses the structure and the regular interactions with strangers, misses knowing he was making his own way. He misses things as they were, and yet–

“Not really,” he answers, and Armin, predictably, does not appear surprised. “Things have… changed. I don’t think they’ll ever be the same.”

He knows that Armin is thinking something along the lines of _what a colossal fucking dramatist,_ so he carries on talking before he can interject.

“Armin…” he begins, moving so that his hands sit clasped between his slightly parted legs, staring downwards. Not at the water, and not at his lap; just at nothing, as if alone with his thoughts. Armin pulls at the collar of his pristinely ironed white shirt, his quiet way of expressing impatience, so Eren presses on. “I’m not crazy, so please don’t jump to that conclusion, but I keep… seeing things.”

Armin pauses with his cigarette millimetres from his lips. “If you don’t want me to jump to that conclusion, I’m assuming you have more to say.”

Eren nods. “It’s like they’re memories, except they’re not. None that I can remember, anyway. And we’re all there. Me, you, Mikasa. Levi,” he pauses on the last name and his gut clenches painfully. He pushes forward. “Everyone, and then people I don’t recognise, too. Armin, it’s so _real_.”

His friend hums and Eren recalls their disagreement over Eren’s observation of Sasha who, guiltily, he had still not seen, or tried to see, since the incident. He doesn’t think he could ever face her again, and he clasps his hands tighter within his lap, his knuckles white.

“You… I don’t mean to patronise you, but you _have_ always been very… imaginative,” Armin licks his lips. “Creative, even. Maybe your brain’s just in over-drive, with not being in work. It makes sense.”

 _Yeah,_ Eren thinks, except it _doesn’t._ The faces, places, the _horrors,_ that now plague his every isolated thought and dream – _God,_ the _dreams_ – cloud the better senses of his mind and he remembers them in the same way he remembers innocent, useless instances from his own life, in the same way he remembers the first time he met Jean every time he gets a nosebleed, in the way he remembers the first time he got drunk with Connie every time he hears Nickelback. They’re not constant, and they’re not chronological; now, he spots Levi rinsing butterknives over the kitchen sink and he sees him, in his mind’s eye, polishing unnaturally thick swords over a puddle of blood that steams like heat from a sauna, and he sees Mikasa’s eyes twitch in familiar concern but _now_ he remembers a face just like hers jumping out of the harsh swings of gargantuan fists.

They’re utterly random, and he doesn’t know where they’ve come from, but his gut tells him that they’ve come from _somewhere._ Not random, then, but _aimed,_ like his brain is aching for that reality, tugging at the palpable existences before him like anchors – or perhaps not anchors, but like pins on a board connected by thick pieces of string; like pathways, intertwined and littered in _meaning._

“No,” he protests. “That’s not it.”

Armin hums thoughtfully but doesn’t offer any alternative and, wary of letting his mind wander too far into the realms of psychiatric analysis and intrusive interrogations, he forces himself to unload what had brought him here in the first place.

“Levi doesn’t believe me either,” he confesses, and Armin’s neck twitches in his direction.

“Is… that what you’ve been arguing about?” he asks, and Eren shakes his head, small strands of dark hair falling from the bobble they’re tied into.

“We haven’t even argued,” he admits, and sees Armin’s pale brows furrow. “Not verbally, anyway. I… I sketched some stuff, and showed it him, and, Armin, I _know_ he remembers it too.”

Armin’s face continues to scrunch up like a paper bag at the words and Eren ploughs on despite the knowledge that he’s headed for a sectioning.

“He says it’s migraines.”

“He _does_ suffer with them, Eren.”

“I know that,” Eren bites, irked by the sound but unwanted intrusion. “I know that, but that’s not what happened. He was fine and then seeing the drawings… freaked him, and I could _tell_ he saw what I saw, remembered what I remember, but in the morning…”

Eren’s eyes squint at the memory. He had woken up early, for once, and had made Levi a cup of tea to compensate for the mental strain that remembering these things can trigger; hell, Eren had found himself stuck in hospital for _days_. Only, Levi had drank the tea and had gone about life as per usual; he’d left for work, pecking Eren softly on the lips as he went, like every day, and when Eren had tried to bring up the drawings, he had blanched at him as if he’d never seen them at all. Eren can’t remember covering the canvasses, but when he wandered into the spare room, he’d discovered their old bedsheet hanging from the tops of them like a guillotine, the faces and the memories hidden beneath a thin, threatening veil.

“Eren…” Armin sounds, mournful, and this time, Eren caves.

“D’you know anything about the titans?” he snaps, eyes glaring into Armin’s profile like fire, and Armin frowns.

“…Well, yeah, obviously,” he answers, flicking the stub of his cigarette towards a shallow dip in the pavement where other abandoned dimps had been laid to rest. “Everybody does.”

He remembers the lessons from primary school, an ancient history bordering mythological, a thrilling tale about walls and soldiers and gargantuan humanoid beasts devouring humanity; a story about war and genocide and loss that had been almost the only subject Eren had truly taken a liking to at that age. It was just a story, and there’s very little to be said about in terms of concrete fact, so much so that it’s believed by most to have been entirely made up. Still, Eren sees them in his dreams; the walls, the titans, the soldiers, and had connected the dots impressively early on.

“Do you know anything… definitive about it all?” Eren asks, biting the inside of his lip. “What’s the evidence?”

Armin frowns deeply. “Not really,” he admits, and Eren sighs mournfully despite fully expecting this response. “The consensus is that it’s just a terrifying fairy-tale. There’s no evidence of any walls at all, just gates, maybe, but even that’s not completely confirmed. It’s all theoretical.” Armin sighs and tilts his head to the side in thought. “I did read something about the earth being… different, kind of, spanning from here and across quite a breadth of the continent, which suggests _some_ sort of event.”

Eren’s eyes widen and he leans into Armin’s space, the words causing the hairs on his arms to rise. “What sort of event?”

“Kind of like a nuclear explosion would cause, or a meteorite, maybe,” Armin continues speculatively. “Archaeologists have gone digging – kind of like how they do to track the ice age, or other mass-extinction events, you know? And they can see that something occurred around the time that the titans were thought to exist that… upturned the earth, essentially. Flattened it, almost. For miles.”

Eren’s mouth goes dry and the words escape his lips without his conscious thought. “The rumbling.”

“Well, that’s one theory, but it’s mostly a conspiracy. Honestly, I doubt it; there’s evidence to suggest the island used to be volcanic. That would make a lot more sense. We’re talking _ancient_ history here, Eren. _Older_ than ancient.”

“But you _just_ said there might be evidence of gates,” Eren growls, irritated, unable to shake the feeling of consolidation that the evidence of the rumbling has triggered. He feels bile rise in his throat and he swallows it down.

Armin shrugs. “Yeah, but the carbon dating hasn’t provided much accuracy. Even the _best_ estimations span a good 400-year window – it’s possible they were built afterward; likely, even, given that an event like that would’ve almost certainly destroyed… well, everything. I _do_ find it strange that it seems the event only impacted the rest of the continent, though; a tsunami’s possible, but… an eruption of _that_ scale is more than likely to have triggered some sort of extinction, maybe, serious climate change, that sort of thing, on a far more global scale. On the other hand, there’s no remains of any titans anywhere. You’d think if we can find dinosaurs, we’d be able to find _them_ , right?”

“They disintegrated.”

Armin’s laugh shocks Eren, but he turns to meet his friend’s eyes anyway. “I forgot how into this stuff you were in school,” Armin giggles, while Eren grits his teeth. “That’s another theory that gets thrown around, but the scientific consensus is that it’s all but impossible that they’d spontaneously evaporate.”

Armin has a high-pitched titter of amusement that rides on the backs of his words, but Eren is not smiling, and Armin notices as much. He shifts slightly closer, his lips pursed and his brows low.

“Why are you asking me this, Eren?”

In the seconds that follow, Eren realises with a sinking feeling that he cannot confide in Armin much further. The revelation makes him want to cry, but he _knows_ whatever it is he’s experiencing is that of lunacy. He remembers his friends’ face in the blurred memories that he has come to accept are not his; he sees his fear and his intelligence and, sometimes, he sees him with a deep and unfathomable sorrow plaguing his wide eyes, muscle and ligament stretched across his cheeks. He longs to keep that shattered expression off his Armin’s face, wants to keep it locked deep within himself.

He doesn’t know the truth behind the memories and believes it’s possible he never will; as time goes on, though, they force themselves into Eren’s every thought and feeling vociferously, carving their presence amongst his own memories, tainting them, tainting _him._

The first time he’d seen a selfie that Sasha had uploaded after his episode, in a gorgeous black catsuit before a night out with Connie and Jean, Eren’s brain had replaced the image with a pale face, blue lips, and a gaping hole torn from her abdomen. His instinct was to let out a strangled laugh.

He shudders. He won’t let this taint Armin – won’t let this taint their invaluable and timeless friendship. He’d sooner die.

He needs to _know_ , though.

"I don’t know,” he lies, eventually. He still can’t smile, and his hands are balled into fists in the dirt. “Boredom – just something to read up on. Guess I still find it all pretty interesting.”

Armin doesn’t ease his expression immediately but, after a few moments, his shoulders relax and he sighs. “That’s understandable,” he concedes. “I imagine being stuck at home isn’t doing you any favours – what’s the next step with all of that, anyway?”

The last two days had felt so suffocating that Eren actively did not want to think about them. Aside from the incontrovertible tension between him and Levi, his MRI and the scheduled check-up from yesterday morning had both gone disastrously. Levi had argued with Hanji _excessively,_ asking probing and purely speculative questions about Eren’s condition – Eren had noticed, based on some medical jargon that had spouted out of his mouth, that he’d been _googling_ – and the lack of _anything_ on his scan had sent Levi _and_ Hanji into something of a frenzy, Hanji marvelling at the lack of immediately perceptible evidence and Levi adamant that they should put him through the machine again, perhaps the first time Eren had ever seen the pair agree on something. Eren had accepted his fate, only to be rewarded with the same findings, the same _nothing._

He had noticed the way Levi didn't speak a word to him on the car ride home, had barely said anything beyond the casual in the last _week_ , and he was starting to suspect that Levi, at this point, _wanted_ something to show up, _wanted_ something to explain away Eren’s episode, his _changes,_ his memories.

He had stormed out of the house today determined to find answers and had unearthed none but the undeniable and agonising knowledge that he cannot let his new reality ruin his friends the way it is ruining him – the way it is now ruining Levi.

“We don’t know yet,” he says, and clenches his fists at the habitual _we_ that made its way into his mouth. “I’m waiting on a call from the hospital at some point, after they’ve gone over my last tests and double checked the MRI, but Onyankopon seems pretty convinced that I’m in the clear and that they should start looking into getting me back to work.”

Armin’s smile is something radiant, and it tugs a small grin at the corners of Eren’s mouth in turn. “Well, that’s great,” he exclaims. “I really do hope nothing comes up.”

Eren nods his head.

Their conversation takes a polite turn towards Armin’s life, his wellbeing and his job and friendly gossip, Eren naturally slipping into boisterous teasing upon Armin’s admission that he had met a girl and that she seemed to like him, until the sun dips beneath the buildings and the world begins to turn grey.

Armin stands up first, dusting his backside off and shrugging his jacket over his shoulders. Eren gives pause. He doesn’t feel ready to go home, not yet, and he’s still plagued by the tugging sensation that his overwhelming lack of knowledge has cursed him with.

“Is the library still open?”

Armin pulls his satchel over his shoulder and turns to face him. “Yeah,” he confirms. “Why?”

Eren shrugs and rises with him. “I might go find some stuff on the titans,” he explains as they begin walking up toward the main road. “Keep me busy till I’m back at the hospital.”

Armin grins excitedly. “That sounds great,” he enthuses, and Eren’s body suddenly feels warm.

When they reach Armin’s bus stop, he provides Eren with thorough directions for the whereabouts of Paradis-related lore and, when they part, Eren puts a firm hand on Armin’s shoulder.

“Will you tell Sasha and the others that I’m okay?” he pleads, and swallows deeply. “I haven’t had chance to speak to them much and I don’t want them to worry, if they are.”

“Everyone’s worried,” Armin says. “But yes, I’ll tell them. They’ll be so happy to hear from you, Eren.”

Eren nods and _knows this,_ knows it so surely that his whole body feels alive with the impenetrable fact of his friendships, of the life he has built for himself, of the reliability of what is rightfully _his,_ that he forgets, for a flittering moment, that his world has changed so dramatically that he he may never see it in the same way again.

Armin pauses before getting onto the bus and fixes Eren with an unreadable look. “I don’t want to tell you what to do, but… I think that you should give Jean a call.”

Eren frowns. “Why would I do that?”

“He seems… _really_ worried,” Armin answers, chewing his lip. “He thinks the fight you guys had might have had something to do with triggering the whole… incident. I don’t know how likely that is, but it couldn’t hurt to hear from you.”

Eren closes his eyes and takes a long breath through his nose. “Alright,” he submits, burying his hands in his pockets. “I’ll call him soon.”

Armin grins, wide and familiar, and steps onto the bus.

Eren waves him off and makes haste toward the library.

***

Eren doesn’t know why, but the books in his arms feel far heavier than they should, literally weighing him down, and stepping through the front door comes as a relief despite his earlier trepidation about returning.

Still, he edges up the hallway to peer around, knowing, in his gut, that Levi would not appreciate his sudden desire to learn about the island’s history, would treat it with suspicion and, worst case, would lose himself completely in the memories as he had done last week.

Eren’s _bitter_ , and he’s aware of it. He had yearned for Levi to see what he was seeing; felt guilty, almost, as though he was keeping something from him where he had never been in that habit before, was so used to Levi listening attentively to his every thought and feeling, impulsive or complex, useless or meaningful.

Satisfied that he wasn’t going to appear out of nowhere, Eren creeps softly up the staircase and instinctively toward the spare room.

He hasn’t felt the need to paint anything since the first time, and frankly suspects that if he starts up again, he won't be able to stop. There’s too much there, too much to unpack – the faces of his friends and of the monsters, of warzones and death, of Levi.

Levi with white eyes, thick and fresh blood dripping down his face. Levi flying, his hair blown back by wind, glaring over his shoulder with a meaningful glint in his eye. Levi, cold and aloof, his arms folded across his chest wearing an icy, disinterested expression. Levi, tearing down monsters with seamless fluidity. Levi, scarred and mauled, dragging two cold but calloused fingers along Eren’s brow.

Placing the books onto the windowsill, Eren lets out a sigh and tugs on the corner of the bedsheet, revealing his portrait, the first one he felt that Levi needed to see.

It isn’t his Levi, but it is. It’s his face and his unquestionable strength. He didn’t get around to adding colour to the drawing, but he knows that the one eye he can see is the same silver, lined with soft hues of vibrant blue, knows that his eyelashes are long and dark and knows that that face, when caught off-guard, would emit the same soft edges as his Levi’s; he supposes his laugh would be the same, too - soft giggles that bubble over into loud bellows, a hand braced over his chest; the other, Eren can’t help but envisage, placed delicately over his own.

The thought is discombobulating, because he knows he is caught between a dichotomy of lives, of memories, of facts and speculation ruminating in his brain.

He leaves the room and stops at the small window at the top of the staircase where a silver picture frame sits on an angle beside a cedar and lotus diffuser. He peers over and traces the edges with his fingertips, taking in the memory at face value. Levi’s grin is wide, his lips closed, but the tilt of them angles up the entire right side of his face in what Eren knows to be amusement. His eyes are tilted to the left, his jaw at an angle, and his irises are glimmering with the flash of the camera. Farlan had taken the photograph, and you can see the edge of his thumbnail creeping into the bottom of the frame; to Levi’s left are Eren and Isabel, their arms around each other’s shoulders, their mouths open and their eyes closed in unfiltered hysterics at something Farlan had said – Eren can’t remember what the words were, now, but he knows the quip was at Levi’s expense.

That had been at Isabel’s annual Christmas party, except that time it wasn’t a Christmas party at all. Eren smirks at the image of Levi walking into the room to an ear-splitting chorus of ‘ _Surprise! Happy birthday, Levi!’_ ; he had been holding Eren’s hand and, at the sudden onslaught of noise and applause, had gripped it tightly, his face falling slack and his eyes uncharacteristically wide. He’d looked scared to death, and Eren had squeezed his hand once in reassurance. Levi looked at him, looked at Eren’s own smile, and Eren had whispered ‘ _happy birthday.’_ Levi looked deceptively like he was about to cry. Eren knew him better, though, and when Isabel jumped on his partner, separating them, Levi had sought Eren’s eyes as his body eased and warmed to the sound of Isabel’s voice in his ear, her arms around his neck, and Eren had mouthed _I love you._ Levi had mouthed it back.

Eren gulps, taking a step away from the photograph and pondering, for a moment, if he had ever seen Isabel or Farlan in any of his new memories. He racks his brain and finds that, no, he has never seen them; there’s nothing there to taint them, no reason for him to doubt their characters as he knows them now. They were from this life, and this life only; they were Levi’s, and Levi was his.

Eren tries to imagine the Levi from his visions hugging someone, tries to imagine his face fearful at something as sweet as a surprise party, tries to imagine his unnaturally scarred and mangled face mouthing _I love you_ to Eren across a swarm of people and the images do not correlate; if anything, they make him uncomfortable – he finds himself a little disturbed by the prospect. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen the Levi from his memories smile, even.

Leaning against the wall, Eren has to stifle the tears as they prick at his eyelids. He had been so _stupid,_ so fucking _selfish._

There was absolutely nothing connecting the two Levi’s other than Eren’s fragile mind; other than a certain outward stoicism and some obvious physical traits, the two versions don’t coincide any more than the obvious disparity he had felt when looking at Sasha. His Levi loves him, they love each other, and he feels his stomach clench at the realisation that he had deemed _Armin_ worthy of protection from the gruesome memories that had tainted Eren’s entire life, but not Levi.

He’s _strong_ – Eren knows this much, but he also knows that he pretends not to cry at Homeward Bound whenever they watch it together, that he hadn’t replied to the first text that Eren had ever sent him out of sheer nerves, that when they visit their mother’s respective graves Levi always places small stones on the both of them with his left hand, carefully, an ode to his own mother’s religion, despite Eren’s being an atheist when she had passed.

He doesn’t know where the idea had come from, that Levi would somehow be able to withstand the memories while Armin, Mikasa, _anybody else_ would not. He’s so _human_.

Determined and admittedly still disturbed by his own carelessness, Eren makes his way down the stairs and toward the kitchen.

Levi is stood over the cooker, stirring something that smells divine masterfully as it sizzles loudly. He must have heard the door creak – they’d been meaning to get that fixed for a while – but he hasn’t turned to face Eren. Now, Eren doesn’t think he can blame him.

His limbs numb, he paces to where Levi is stood and snakes his arms around his waist tightly, clasping his fingers together against his chest.

Levi noticeably hardens in his arms, his muscles tense and defined beneath his white shirt, but Eren leans down and rests his chin on Levi’s shoulder anyway; he breathes deeply and is overwhelmed by the somehow musky _and_ floral cologne that Levi wears, by the smell of tea and of the stir-fry that he’s cooking for them both despite having no way of knowing when Eren would have returned, if he would have returned at all, and Eren presses an experimental kiss to the soft skin beneath Levi’s earlobe. Levi leans back, only slightly, hardly noticeable, so Eren repeats the action and squeezes Levi’s chest with his arms.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, his voice a strangled whisper. Levi doesn’t react. He presses another kiss to his skin, this time against the curve of his neck, knows Levi likes it there. “I’m so sorry, Levi, I’m such an idiot. I’m sorry that everything’s been so terrible lately, and I’m sorry that I can never let things go. There’s so much going through my mind that it’s killing me, but I know there must be so much going through yours, too, and I’m so sorry that I haven’t considered that till now.”

Eren pauses for a tearful breath, aggravated by his own apparent weakness, but he manages to find his voice again when Levi turns his face to the side, his cheek nuzzling Eren’s nose.

“I’m sorry that I’m argumentative and bratty and I’m _so sorry_ that whatever it is that’s going on with me is affecting you. I’m sorry that I don’t think and that I push you when you don’t want to be pushed but, Levi, I love you so much. I love you so much that I don’t know what I’d do without you, don’t know what you’d do without me, sometimes, and I _miss_ you.” Levi’s hands have moved to switch the dial on the stove, and he places one over Eren’s. “I miss you, and I miss what we had before all of this. I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want this to be permanent, I just–”

Shocking Eren into silence, Levi turns in place, breaks free of Eren’s grip effortlessly; he leans against the cooker and regards Eren for a long moment, a _painful_ moment, where Eren doesn’t know what he’s gotten himself into, doesn’t know if Levi’s going to turn this into a lesson or if he’s going to call Eren out for his thoughtless bullshit, if he’s going to just up and leave. Eren wouldn’t stop him and, now, he couldn’t hold it against him.

“Eren,” he murmurs, and the word is spoken softly, like it’s fragile, like it needs protecting. Eren places a hand against Levi’s cheek, feels his heart shatter when Levi flinches away.

Levi’s eyes are wide; so wide, and his pupils suddenly so small, that Eren considers for a moment that he hadn’t even meant to evade Eren’s touch, looks like he’s just dropped a priceless vase and watched it scatter into pieces across a wide epicentre.

“You can’t even kiss me anymore,” Eren says, the observation startling him, disgusted by his own sob-choked voice. He makes to move away, but Levi reaches out and grabs his wrist.

“I kiss you every day,” Levi counters, except his voice his gravelly and not at all reassuring. His gaze is fixed on where his fingers hold Eren’s arm, like a vice.

“That’s routine,” Eren whimpers. “You kiss me every morning because it’s what we’re used to. You haven’t not wanted to touch me since – since the beginning. Wh – why can’t you kiss me? What is it you’re seeing that I’m not?”

Levi’s eyes flicker up to Eren’s face, and he sees a hardness in them that he’s only really seen in his memories of the other Levi. They look dark, a little calculative, like he’s surveying his options meticulously before anything more occurs. Eren forces his eyes closed and tries to access the sense of feeling he gets when his mind thrusts the other Levi into the forefront, finds nothing but staunch adoration, something like respect; a fragile relationship, perhaps, one built out of necessity, but not one of significant inconsistency or – _this._ Whatever this _look_ on Levi’s face means.

Except there are swathing blind spots in Eren’s memories; there’s seldom any context at all, just feelings and images that, in aggregate, do not paint a pretty picture. He sees a look of agonising disappointment on the other Levi’s face, and his eyes fly open.

“What…” he begins but, through some persistent sobs still edged in his throat, he struggles to formulate the sentence. “What did I _do_?”

Levi hisses and his entire face cracks like splintered glass. Shards of mirror split into a multitude of sections, a multitude of emotions, of experiences, of lives.

He eases his grip on Eren’s wrist and places the hand, instead, against the hot skin of Eren’s neck. He knows he’s getting worked up, knows he’s headed for a lecture, perhaps even the hospital, until Levi speaks again.

“ _Nothing,”_ he says, his stare locking onto Eren’s eyes, pupils flitting between them both. He strokes a thumb along Eren’s jaw. “You’ve done _nothing,_ Eren,” he reiterates, conviction slowly easing its way into his tone, but Eren isn’t taken by it. He watches as Levi rakes his eyes over Eren’s face, over his features, licking his lips softly and shaking his head minutely.

“Then why–?”

“I don’t know,” Levi interjects before Eren can finish, his jaw set in a menacing line. “I don’t know, but I need you to know that this isn’t just about… you. There’s a lot for me to think about, too, a lot for me to come to terms with – it feels like too much to _not_ compartmentalise. But,” he stops and Eren doesn’t miss the way his breath hitches. “I do love you. I know that I love you, and I promise you that things will go back to how they were, soon. I promise. I’ll do everything I can, within _reason_ , to make that happen for you. I want nothing more.”

Slowly, forcing a pained and piteous looking smile, Levi takes his hand from Eren’s neck, pulls his sleeve down over his hands and rises up to meet Eren, dabbing his wet cheeks with the soft material.

“I really hate it when you cry,” Levi laughs, sounding quite choked up himself, if Eren didn’t know better. Eren nods and wipes the rest of his face with the sleeve of his own jumper, locking eyes with Levi.

“I _love_ you, Eren,” Levi speaks, again, and Eren doesn’t think he’s ever heard him say the words so much in such a short period of time. Eren catches the way Levi’s eyebrows are tilted upward in the middle, seemingly in disbelief of something that Eren cannot see, cannot fathom, he just sees Levi – _his_ Levi, strikingly human and so, so familiar. Levi shakes his head and his hair shakes with him. “I’m _so_ sorry,” he says, the words rushing out of him like a brilliant gust of wind, and he slams their lips together with such force that Eren stumbles back to lean against the island.

The kiss is nothing like their morning goodbyes; it is aggressive and urgent and Eren feels like Levi is trying to crawl under his skin, his hands dragging through Eren’s hair, strands falling messily out of the bobble, dragging down his chest, under his jumper, along his arms. It takes Eren a minute to kiss back, his senses returning to him in a flash of realisation, realisation that he hasn’t been touched like this in far too long, longer than he had been since him and Levi had started dating, and his previously useless arms clasp tightly around Levi’s waist.

He kisses him back feverishly, his eyes closed lightly, his tongue reaching out to swipe along Levi’s bottom lip, and Levi tilts his head back to suck in a breath before dragging Eren down to him, both hands around his neck.

Eren has to slump to kiss Levi like this, but he loves it; always has, since the first time, loves that Levi fits perfectly in his arms.

Once, they had shared what they thought was a discreet moment of intimacy on an evening walk along the canal except, when they continued walking, a tourist had bounded over to them with a huge camera in their hands, explaining that they had been taking pictures of the sunset and had caught one of their kiss. They showed them the image and said, _‘together, you have the most beautiful silhouette.’_

Levi had scoffed at the compliment but, when Eren had gasped at the beauty of the image, at the way their bodies looked like shadows against the orange of the river, Levi had wordlessly shoved a twenty note into the tourist’s hands along with a card with his email on.

The photo sits in a small frame in Levi’s office, now, Eren knows, and Eren printed off a smaller version, encasing it in plastic and attaching it to his housekeys.

At the memory, a scorching heat rises through his abdomen, up through his chest, makes his shoulders twinge with the comfort of their relationship, of their whole life, _this life,_ and Eren shifts his arms lower so that they’re looped around Levi’s thighs, hoists him up into his arms and places him gently on top of the island.

Levi moans softly into Eren’s mouth and Eren eats it up, opening his mouth to swallow the sound down, their teeth clacking together with the force of the sudden power that Eren feels course through him, wants to channel it into Levi’s bloodstream, into his very essence.

Levi’s legs are wrapped tightly around Eren’s hips, his fingernails digging into the back of his neck and Eren hisses when one hand rises to tug impatiently at the hem of Eren’s jumper.

He forces himself to pull away, placing his hands on the countertop either side of Levi, and takes a moment to catch his breath. Levi looks at him, his eyes half open, his lips red.

“Bed?”

“Please,” Levi breathes, and he wraps both arms around Eren’s neck knowingly, doesn’t have to wait long before Eren’s hands are on his ass, scooping him up against his torso, and they’re walking toward the staircase, Eren peppering soft kisses along the side of Levi’s face as he goes.

“Here we go,” Levi snorts, and Eren manages a laugh as he lifts one leg onto the bottom step.

“I’ve got this,” Eren grunts, but his grin doesn’t falter and neither does Levi’s.

Eren wobbles and Levi’s hand moves quickly from Eren’s neck, smacking loudly against the white banister, and Eren lets out a chuckle at the gesture.

“Your lack of trust in me is unfounded and rude,” Eren says once they’re halfway up the stairs and, in response, Levi’s thighs tighten around his hips and he grinds his own, once, against Eren’s crotch.

“Hurry the fuck up,” he orders, and Eren, groaning quietly, does as he’s told.

He drops Levi onto the bed when they get there and climbs on top of him, Levi’s legs parting intuitively, waiting for him, and their lips meet again with a newfound tenderness that Eren hadn’t honestly anticipated.

Levi’s hands drag through Eren’s hair, pulling the bobble out entirely so that it falls in dark cascades over Levi’s face and he brushes them back repetitively but softly, his fingernails grazing Eren’s scalp in a comforting way, scratching gently at the base of his neck, and Eren lets out a quiet moan at the goosebumps that blossom down his spine.

“Off,” Levi says, and Eren gets the message.

He pulls at his jumper until it lifts over his head, throwing it toward the floor, and when he goes to lean back down, his lips tingling with the need to be against Levi’s, he sees that Levi has begun unbuttoning his shirt, is nearly finished, and Eren has to take a minute to just gawp.

“God,” he groans, his hips moving to grind against Levi’s groin. “I’ll never get over this.”

It isn’t a lie; the sight of Levi’s body still has his mouth watering and his mind numbing like the first time, the white skin and the dips of his abs and the small scars, barely there, from scraps and fights downtown. Eren pushes down the memory of the other Levi’s marred face and leans back, his eyes fixated on his Levi.

“I haven’t been to the gym in weeks,” Levi warns, sounding breathless and even _shy_ , but he leans up to press a kiss to Eren’s jugular as he shrugs the shirt off his shoulders, throws it on top of Eren’s jumper.

“I really don’t care,” Eren says, tilting his head to allow Levi better access to his neck as they slowly lean back toward the bed. “You’re still so perfect.”

“Not so bad yourself,” Levi grunts and Eren’s laugh gets caught in his throat when Levi’s teeth bite down on the skin there, a hand gliding across Eren’s chest and the edge of a finger dragging against a nipple.

Levi’s hands move quickly to unbutton Eren’s jeans and Eren, in strong agreement, steps off the bed to rid himself of the rest of his clothes; his jeans fall to the floor, his boxers following, and the drag of the fabric makes him flinch. He moves a hand to tug himself softly, already hard, and watches as Levi removes his work pants and kicks them off the end of the bed.

Levi’s cock is hard, too, and it lies against his stomach. Levi has always had better self-restraint than Eren, though, and he lies casually with one arm behind his head and the other draped lazily over his abs.

“You just going to stare at me and jerk yourself off?” Levi jokes, his eyebrow raised, and Eren shakes his head urgently, climbing back onto the bed and between Levi’s legs, angling their lengths so that Eren can wrap his fingers around them both.

Levi lets out a strangled groan and leans his head back, his arm covering his eyes, and Eren bucks his hips against his own will at the sight.

"I’ve missed you,” Eren breathes, his strokes bordering rapid, urgent, and Levi’s cock twitches against Eren’s.

“Me, too,” he whispers, and his hand comes down from his eyes to comb Eren’s hair back again.

Their eyes meet and there are tears in the corners of Levi’s – it’s not unusual, his eyes water when they fuck almost every time – and it makes Eren’s heart lurch, powerful, all but forces him to kiss Levi’s forehead, Levi’s cheeks, his nose, his jaw.

“Eren,” Levi grunts, tilting his hips upwards. “Stop it or I’m–”

"Yeah,” Eren agrees, and he pulls back to root through the bedside draw, pulling the lube out, while Levi opens the second one down and pulls out a condom.

Eren leans back on his knees and Levi pelts the silver wrapper at him, hitting his chest. Eren can’t help but roll his eyes.

“Ah, yes,” he mumbles, coating his fingers with lube and rubbing them down Levi’s crack; Levi moans, but the irritation is still present in his eyes. “Don’t want you getting knocked up.”

“You know that’s not– _ugh,_ ” Eren grins triumphantly as his finger slips through the ring of muscle, and he eases it in slowly but _deep,_ right up to his knuckle. “That’s not the point.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Eren manages, his voice impassive and calm despite the ache of his dick. “I forgot about our promiscuous open sex life for a minute there – all those partners, never knowing where they’ve been–”

“ _Eren,”_ the name comes out somewhere between a groan as Eren slips in another finger and a threatening _bite_ at Eren’s obvious teasing. “Stop being an – _ass_.”

Eren grins triumphantly and speeds up the movement of his fingers, his knuckles slapping hard against Levi’s cheeks, his other hand coming to rest at Levi’s waist so that Eren can look down at his face, at his rosy cheeks and his red lips, at the way his eyes scrunch up and a guttural moan escapes him at every thrust. His whole body moves up and down with the power of Eren’s arm, of the fingers inside him, and Eren’s cock twitches impatiently against his thigh.

“I’m just playing with you,” Eren murmurs sweetly, pressing a kiss to Levi’s temple that Levi fully leans into, and Eren moves the hand he’s leaning on to graze a finger against Levi’s waist. He arches the fingers inside Levi up and at a slight angle so that he hears Levi’s loud cry right against his ear, feels his breath blow out against his cheek and Levi’s hips jut down onto Eren’s hand.

"Good,” Eren whispers. “That’s good, Levi,” he breathes, and Levi’s hand grips Eren’s ass so tightly that it makes Eren hiss.

“Don’t be condescending,” Levi grumbles, and Eren laughs. “Fuck me.”

“Yes, sir,” Eren says.

He pauses at the words. His world turns on an axis for a star-splitting moment, the kind where his synapses turn to pure static, but he’s dragged back when Levi presses quick kisses along his profile.

He moves obediently, releasing his fingers and wiping the excess of lube against his thigh, before ripping the condom wrapper open carefully and rolling the rubber down onto his length. He gives himself a few reassuring pumps of his fist, his momentary lapse having him soften a touch.

“You look so fucking good,” Levi’s voice calls, and Eren grips his length at the base, his eyes clenching closed. Levi’s voice always had his brain hot-wiring, even in moments of the mundane, and when things like that slip out Eren feels his whole body can hear it.

He breathes shakily before parting Levi’s cheeks with one hand, his legs falling further apart compliantly, covering his sheathed length with an extra coating of lube for good measure, before he pokes Levi’s entrance with the tip of his dick, edging forward slowly and chewing his lip harshly.

“I don’t–” Eren starts and has to halt his tentative movements. “I don’t know how long I’m gonna’ last. It’s been a while.”

“I guess you’ll have to make it count then,” Levi levels, shifting his hips downward in a sudden movement that has them both gasping viscerally. “I’ll make up for it after.”

Eren’s eyes glaze over at the insinuation, at the _promise,_ and he places a steadying hand on the inside of Levi’s thigh as he pushes deeper, _deeper,_ until Levi has taken all of him and white noise blusters between Eren’s ears.

“Oh, my _God_ ,” he moans, and Levi nods in agreement, his arms snaking around the back of Eren’s neck and tugging him down until their noses brush, Levi damn near bent in half. Eren pulls back and snaps his hips in again, the tightness and the heat sending him spiralling.

“ _Ah,”_ Levi gasps softly as Eren repeats the motion, and Eren presses a messy kiss against the corner of Levi’s open mouth.

“Eren,” he murmurs, his hand tightening around the hair at the bottom of Eren’s head. “Against the – _ugh_ – the wall, against the wall.”

Eren nods and briefly thanks the _Gods_ for this glorious man, every single part of him, tries not to feel guilty about dedicating so much time to thinking about the other Levi, a man he doesn’t know, will never know, when he has _his_ right here, in front of him, aching and wanting and so fundamentally _loving_.

He scoops Levi up into his arms by his thighs, his hands meeting in a fist at the small of his back so that, upon rising, the backs of Levi’s knees lie in the crooks of Eren’s elbows, his nails pressing grooves into the muscles of Eren’s back. He bends his knees slightly once Levi’s back meets the wall before thrusting upward, Levi’s head lolling back against the wallpaper.

“Yeah,” Eren grunts, thrusting his hips more regularly, now, ears ringing with the sounds of Levi’s cries, raking his eyes along Levi’s toned torso, over the dark pool of hair around his dick as it bounces between them, at the tenseness in his thighs as they brace around Eren’s firm hold. He feels Levi’s grip in his hair, tugging on it harshly, and a groan of pure ecstasy escapes Eren’s lips, Levi angling his hips against each thrust. “You like that? _Fuck –_ tell me how you like it, Levi.”

Levi complies, straining his neck so that his lips press against Eren’s, Eren’s hips moving with increasing momentum, and Levi’s mouth moves against his as he speaks.

"You’re so good,” Levi breathes, each word straining in pace with Eren’s thrusts. Eren feels his balls tighten at the words, at that tone that he hears in Levi’s voice exclusively when he’s like this, up against Eren and taking him, all of him. “You’re so fucking good to me, Eren – want you to _come_ ,” the last word coincides with a particularly ruthless slap of skin, Levi’s cheeks against Eren’s thighs, and it comes out positively wrangled. “Come for me, baby.”

Eren loses it at _baby,_ terms of endearment so rare to hear from Levi, and he presses his forehead against the crook of Levi’s shoulder. He _knew_ he wouldn’t last long, but the feeling of Levi deliberately tensing the muscles in his ass around Eren’s length sends him under, come flowing out of him in spurts that seem to last a lifetime, and he feels Levi pressing chaste kisses against the top of his head, hands still tangled in Eren’s hair.

He sighs and Levi pats his back softly. Eren’s knees feel like they might give out, so he shifts both hands upward, fingers spread wide across the middle of Levi’s back, before he takes one wide step toward the bed, both of them falling against it, limbs tangling together.

“I can’t tell you,” Eren begins, breathless. “How in love with you I am.”

Levi turns his head to face Eren. Their legs are still in a knot, but their torsos are side by side, facing the ceiling.

“You’re so shit at pillow talk,” Levi teases, and Eren barks out a laugh. He spots Levi’s chest wobbling with low giggles.

"Yeah,” he admits, still chuckling. “Yeah, I’ll give you that.”

He feels Levi shifting beside him, and Eren smirks, untangling their legs to turn onto his side and placing a hand firmly around Levi’s cock, still hard and dripping. Levi’s eyes flutter shut at the sensation and Eren moves his fingers gently, teasingly, up and down.

“What d’you want?” Eren mumbles, low, his fingertips circling the tip of Levi’s cock softly.

Levi grunts and tips his hips up.

“Blow me,” he breathes, _pleads,_ and Eren’s grin is so wide and elated at the invitation that somehow Levi must feel it across the bed; Eren watches his Adam’s apple bob and his collar bones jut out as he tilts his head back. “Don’t be a dick about it.”

Eren licks his lips and promises not to be, presses a raspberry to Levi’s shoulder which earns him a deserved swat to the top of his head, and he really, truly thinks, _God, I never deserved this. I want this forever._

_***_

In the morning, Eren wakes to the sound of Levi cracking his neck, yawning loudly, and a soft hand settling over his bare hipbone.

He grins into the pillow, Levi’s other arm still under his neck, and leans into the feeling of Levi’s chest against his back.

“Hi,” he says, quietly, pulling the covers over his shoulder. His head aches from crying, and also perhaps from lack of sleep. The blowjob was all well and good, except Eren had found himself hard once Levi came in his mouth, and by the time they both curled up in surrender it was way past 2am, at the earliest.

“Good morning,” Levi mumbles, sleep still heavy in his voice, pressing a kiss against the curve between Eren’s shoulder and neck. “Coffee?”

Eren smiles and turns so that Levi’s face is above him, sleep still in his eyes, and nods. “Always,” he answers, and Levi scoffs, picking idly at a piece of fabric on the bedsheet.

“No surprises there, then,” he observes.

“I’m not a surprising person,” Eren retorts, pecking Levi’s collarbone. “I’m really very boring.”

Levi laughs. “I’d pay good money to see you be boring for more than three minutes,” he counters, kissing Eren’s forehead before pulling the covers off himself and slipping his arm out from beneath Eren’s neck.

“You love it,” Eren teases after him and, in turn, Levi pauses at the doorway and slaps a palm against his own naked ass, leaving a red mark alongside the ones Eren had left the night before.

“Fuck you,” he calls, and Levi flips him off in departure.

Eren eases back into the pillows and praises himself on having secured this moment of security, of familiarity, between him and Levi that in his wildest dreams he would not have anticipated. The realisation of his own ridiculous and selfish behaviours had warranted, at best, a stern lecture regarding mindfulness and equality within a relationship that never came, but now, the smell of sex and Levi fills his nose in such a welcoming way that he daren’t think about, _can’t_ consider the alternate reality in which their love for each other had never existed. The person whose memories he now harbours had never woken up to the feeling of Levi pressed against him, of his weak and sleepy words, of his soft and meaningful kisses – every one of them a gentle declaration. The other Eren, and the other Levi, hadn’t wanted this; he can feel that, within himself, and it only makes the distance between the two worlds feel wider, _expansive._

Levi returns to the room far quicker than Eren had expected, and it takes Eren a moment to notice the books in his hands.

He sits up in bed suddenly, far quicker than he should have, because his head spins with vertigo as he leans up onto his elbow.

“Levi,” he begins, but can’t get much more out before Levi throws the books down onto the foot of the bed with such a force that they bounce and scatter across the sheets.

“Eren,” Levi grits out, not looking at him, staring at the hardback books with ancient calligraphy sprawled decoratively across the covers. “What the hell are you _doing?_ ”

Eren starts to feel defensive despite his better judgement, and he sits up straighter. “I know you remember,” he says, his sudden courage frightening him slightly. Gone is the feeling that Levi deserves to be spared of these things. It is far, far too late, apparently.

Levi moves toward the wardrobe and begins pulling clothes out. “No,” he says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t want this shit in our house.”

“Then you’re being a pussy,” Eren exclaims, aware of his own childishness but not even slightly intimidated by the sight of Levi, pectorals bulging and _red,_ turning to face him.

Levi turns his gaze away, pulling on his boxers and jeans dramatically, like he can't wait to be far, far away from Eren and, upon covering his torso with a loose fitting grey t-shirt, he flees to leave the room.

Eren jumps up. Levi isn’t in work today, or they definitely wouldn’t have stayed up as late as they had last night. He ignores his own nakedness and marches toward the doorframe confidently, slamming a palm against it with a surprising bang that echoes throughout the room.

Levi glares up at him and Eren tries hard not to be stifled by it.

“I want you to remember,” Eren admits, his feelings from before his moment of weakness the night before catching up to him. “I do.”

Levi squints his eyes and folds his arms over his chest. “I do not know what the hell you’re talking about,” he says, and Eren tries not to flinch at the venom in the tone. “And if you carry on like this I’m going to have to tell Doctor Zoë.”

"Stop being so fucking _pompous,”_ Eren says, _shouts,_ really, and slams his hand harder against the doorframe. “You’re being ridiculous, and you fucking know it.”

Levi pauses for a long moment.

“If you ever,” he starts. “Behave like this again–”

“Like _what?_ ”

“Like _this,”_ Levi yells, grabbing Eren’s hand and forcing it in front of his own face. He truly thought he’d slammed his palm against the side but, turns out, he had punched it with such force that his knuckles are bleeding, and the tops of his fingers are bright red, heading to bruising. “If you do _this_ shit, I want you out of this house.”

“You _what_?” Eren spits, though his eyes are glued to the blood trickling down his knuckles, the small open cuts on the summits of all four of them.

“You play this shit with Jean, or you spar with Mikasa, or you take your shit out on a fucking wall in solitude, like a _child,_ ” Levi grunts, his anger obvious but with an impressive self-restraint that Eren doubts he could ever accomplish himself. “I don’t care. Do what you like. But you start this shit with _me,_ I want you out.”

Eren gapes slightly at the open wounds on his fist. “Levi, I–”

“I’ll speak to you later,” he announces, pushing past Eren’s arm and marching down the stairs. Eren begins to speak, but is silenced immediately.

“ _Later_ , Eren,” he yells, and slams the front door behind him.

Eren sits feebly on the bed, cupping his injured hand, and his eyes blow wide as the bruises turn to a startlingly bright purple in the blink of an eye, the wounds healing into scabs, and he forces his palms into his eyes, pressing _hard_ until he sees those _fucking_ lighting strikes again, feels like he’s falling fast and untamed through an explosive universe, his own gravity pulling him down to Earth with such a magnificent velocity that he cannot breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //Thank you for reading!! sorry this took ten years I've literally been busy; please do leave comments and/or kudos, I really do wanna communicate with y'all :')  
> ps im english idk why i said y'all but here we are
> 
> i have a playlist for this story if anybody wants it? pls lmk :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!!!
> 
> okay, this chapter's really quite dark in a lot of ways;
> 
> TW panic attacks, self-harm, blood, some slight violence, etcetera, as well as specific mentions of serious/terminal illness. Be careful! Thank you for reading <3

The rain is hammering down by the time Levi pulls up outside of the gym.

It falls in thick cascades down the windscreen, obscuring the world around him. The engine has been shut off for the better part of an hour, but his hands remain gripped on the steering wheel, his knuckles white and his fingertips red. His elbows are stiff with the strain of holding himself in this position, his seat pulled so close to the dash, so he breathes shakily and counts to himself; one, two, three, four, five; five, four, three, two, one.

Sometimes, Levi’s chest feels as though it’s caving in on itself. It hasn’t happened in a long time now, had begun not long after he met Eren, and sometimes he has to stop himself from blaming his partner for unearthing this overbearing sense of estrangement from his body that he doesn’t remember ever feeling before. It happens unannounced, occasionally, but more often than not he can feel it creeping up on him; a lump in his throat or a tremor in his typically nimble fingers, a terrifying notion of dread deep in his gut over something that hasn’t happened yet and, probably, won’t come to pass at all.

Sometimes he wakes up just knowing that it’s coming, and something in his demeanour must give it away, because Eren always nudges him softly and asks, ‘What d’you need?’

Usually, all he has to say is ‘sorry,’ and Eren presses a light kiss to his forehead before making himself scarce for as long as it takes to pass; other times, he grunts, and Eren wraps his arms around him and talks nonsense for as long as time allows; others, Levi says nothing at all, and Eren lies with him or cleans alongside him or sends him casual texts throughout the day.

Today is not one of those days; today he had woken up _fine_ , far more content than he’d felt since before Eren’s episode, but that _dread_ had settled in as soon as he’d spied the books through the opened door, saw the bedsheet pulled back from the canvasses after he’d been the one to cover them. By the time he’d pulled up by Mikasa’s gym, it wasn’t a mild sensation anymore; now, it’s an agony, a maelstrom, and it takes his every ounce of energy to just breathe.

He doesn’t know where his mind is at. There are a multitude of voices flying around his head, all saying different things; it’s like the rain from outside is pouring into him and eviscerating his every comprehension, his every sound and logical thought, and all he wants to do is _run_ – would, probably, and had gotten this far before the world had crashed around him like a pulsating supernova.

It had taken a long time before he bit the bullet and accepted Eren’s help in the matter. He’d outright refused therapy – he had no intention of putting himself through that again – and eventually settled for studying the books that Eren had procured from Armin.

He knows this is a panic attack. He knows that it’s a trauma response. He knows it’s never been Eren’s fault at all, is simply a testament to his life being so free, now, being so _reliable_ that the insanity of his life _before_ had finally been given the opportunity to catch up to him, to send him spiralling with that survival instinct and, with nothing to focus the energy onto, it ruins him.

He forces his eyes away from his knuckles and around him. He sees the blurry light of the gym’s reception, sees some faraway blue in the sky above where the clouds have parted; he spots his own eyes in the rear-view mirror, the green bushes behind him, and a small stain on the roof where Eren had squirted some orange juice after they’d hit a pothole on their way home from work one day.

He follows the ritual through meticulously, pausing for a second each time to focus his senses; he reaches around him for four things he can touch, three things he can hear, two things he can smell, and when he tastes his own dehydrated saliva in his mouth, he takes a shuddering breath and relaxes into the car seat.

He still doesn’t feel entirely grounded – won’t for a long while yet – but he’s painfully aware that he’d neglected to brush his teeth or shower, and the grime he’s now convinced is covering him gives him the motivation to step out of the car and pace toward the reception of the gym. He tries to ignore the irritation of the rain hammering against his head and the uncomfortable stiffness in his joints, clearing his throat in preparation for reintegrating himself with the world outside of his mind.

Jean lifts his gaze from behind the desk and quirks his head in a surreptitious way that Levi clocks, but promptly ignores, and opens his mouth to speak before Levi stops him.

“I need to use your washroom.”

“Uh–”

“The private one.”

Decisively better at reading a room than Eren, Jean does not try to coerce Levi into explaining himself. He fumbles through a drawer that Levi can’t see into, and the look of trepidation in his eyes makes Levi’s skin crawl, grime and all.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he says, eventually, appearing genuinely apologetic. “Mikasa must still have the key on her.”

“Where is she?”

“I think she’s training in the main hall, but–”

Levi nods and doesn’t hear whatever it is that Jean was going to say because he’s already marching around the reception desk and toward the hallway, until he collides full speed with the metal turnstile. He fixes Jean with a look that is an _order,_ really, but Jean hesitates.

“Levi, is Eren–?”

“He’s fine,” Levi grits, actually trying to come across as more human than he feels. He’s sick of repeating those _fucking_ words. “Open the–”

“Tell him that I hope he’s good,” Jean interrupts, and Levi frowns at the atypical look of absolute remorse on his face.

They stare at each other for a moment before Levi nods firmly; he means it, despite his reservations and his _confusion_ over the request, and Jean rolls his desk chair along silently to press a green button. The gates make a churning noise, and Levi forces himself through them.

When he enters the main hall, Mikasa doesn’t notice him. He catches himself watching the muscles in her back as they flex with the swing of each fist through her vest, can see her thighs tensing with such an undeniable power that he is somewhat dumbstruck. She moves with such perfect grace that he feels as though he’s walked in on an intimate moment, and it stops him in his tracks; he hears the loud echoes of each hard pound of the punch-bag, hears Mikasa’s soft and controlled grunts, and when she does speak, he almost misses it completely.

“Are you just going to stand there like a perv, or are you going to say what you need to say?”

Levi’s resolve returns to him quickly and, closing the door behind him, he paces deeper into the space. She’s alone, as expected, and he feels like an unwanted audience.

She steadies the erratic swinging of the bag with one elbow, turning her head to the side.

“Is it Eren?” she asks, and Levi blows his cheeks out, pushing his hands into his pockets.

“When isn’t it Eren?” he responds, trying to crack something of a joke but it comes out _bitter_ and Mikasa’s eyebrows raise seriously.

Her protectiveness when it comes to Eren is a little much for Levi; he feels it too, but with Mikasa he knows that she’d rain hell down on _anybody_ who dared come between her and defending her brother, even Levi himself. Still, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t find her presence something of a comfort, in particular since the hours they had spent together in the hospital without Eren there as a buffer. It had taken him a long time to ease into Eren’s enthusiasm, his lust for life, his charisma; Mikasa, though undeniably a woman in her own right, has never been one for social graces. What you see is what you get, and he never feels as tense around her as he does around Eren’s other friends.

“If it was serious you wouldn’t be here,” she observes, and Levi can’t argue with it. Now, she turns to face him fully, dabbing her forehead with her wristband, but for what cause Levi doesn’t know; he can see that she’s barely broken a sweat. “So, you’ve pissed him off?”

Levi tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. “He’s pissed _me_ off,” he corrects, and Mikasa glares at him. “I need to use your washroom. Jean said you have the key.”

“What’s he done?” she diverts and, well. Isn’t that the million-dollar question.

It’s a question he can’t give a simple answer to, and that irks him in itself; whatever it is that Eren seems so determined to force him into being a part of makes him want to flee, to sprint until his lungs cave in and his legs give out. If communication in general had ever been an issue before, whatever this new venture in their relationship is feels like a minefield, like Levi is tiptoeing delicately around a trigger that has the power to send the both of them flying, blown to bits.

He isn’t lying to Eren; the things he’d shown him, the sight of the calligraphy on the books he had found, don’t make any sense in his mind other than he knows that he doesn’t want them here, doesn’t want them around him, around _Eren_ – they _are_ familiar, but not in an enigmatic or endearing way, not in a way he wants to know more about. It sparks an overwhelming aggression within him, causes the synapses in his brain to sizzle and burst with indiscernible and illogical visions of fire and ice and scorching pain. More than anything, he doesn’t want _Eren_ around all of this shit, wants to drag him to some safe place high above it. If Eren wants Levi to see whatever it is that he’s seeing, it pales in comparison to how much Levi wants to shield Eren from it all, from _himself._

He can’t ignore it for much longer, he knows; Levi’s migraines and the activation of fight or flight that Eren’s new world triggers _aside_ , it’s concerning enough on its own that Eren is so obsessed with all of it. He needs to tell Hange. Soon.

But then that makes it all _real_ , and Eren’s fiery at best; the image of him drugged up and forced to endure torture in the psychological capacity makes his whole body light up like fire.

He sees Mikasa’s eyes twitch impatiently and Levi squints his own at her.

“If you want to stay at our place while I stay at yours for a while, be my guest,” he says. “I know you think the sun shines out of his ass, but sometimes being around someone _every fucking minute_ does nothing but prove that their shit doesn’t smell of roses.”

Mikasa scoffs loudly. “ _I_ think the sun shines out of his ass?” she counters, and, frankly, _fuck off._ She looks him up and down, and then, “You’re out of shape. Spar me.”

Levi, at this, does openly falter. “You _what_?”

She shrugs, cool and aloof, and tightens the bandages around her fists. “Spar me,” she instructs, walking toward him. “You need to cool off, I need to train, and Eren talks so big about your past life that I can’t help but be curious.”

Levi shakes his head. “I’m not fighting you,” he says, grinding his teeth. Mikasa raises an eyebrow challengingly, and Levi rolls his eyes. “I don’t doubt that it’d be an easy job,” he drawls. “I came here because I need to _wash,_ and I’m not fucking indulging you any further. Give me the damn key.”

“Wuss,” Mikasa spits and, surprisingly amused, Levi scoffs.

“Is being an antagonising shit a family trait?”

“Maybe,” Mikasa mutters, getting into position in front of Levi despite his refusal, her fists in front of her face. “Is being a wuss one of yours?”

She breaks her stance to lean to the side, ripping some loose bandages from the boxing ring in the centre of the room, and hands them to Levi. He takes them.

Levelling her with a bored stare, he wraps them around his knuckles expertly, good and tight, and cracks his neck once. It _has_ been a while, and he does miss the gym, misses _fighting,_ sometimes, though he had never done it professionally; he can’t list most forms of martial art by definition, can’t distinguish between a jab and a cross based on the terminology alone, if he’s honest, but his intuition and his flexibility is yet to be rivalled. His body knows exactly how and when to move.

He can’t deny the insuperable need he has felt to fight, recently, too; his muscles are taut, even without working out, from the sheer strain of keeping still, from remaining impassive and deceptively calm, he hopes, over the last week – possibly the last month – and despite his mental reservations about sparring Mikasa, like an _idiot,_ his body is placing itself into position naturally, almost without his own conscious command. Suddenly, his fists are balled at his sides and his left leg is angled back so that he feels taller, feels like he’s looking down on her.

He thinks of Eren punching the wall this morning and tries to reassure himself that he is not stooping to that level of pure impulsive violence; he decides that sparring with a professional in their own workplace is healthier, ultimately, than bruising your fists against oblivious plaster.

He’s just bending his front leg into a more comfortable position when his lip splits and blood flies out.

Mikasa’s leg moves with such an unexpected velocity that Levi genuinely hadn’t anticipated it, and the force of the kick makes him slide back a few paces on his heel; he bends his front leg so that he’s kneeling on it, and he wipes his mouth once before glaring up at her.

“What the _fuck?_ ” he spits, some stray blood spilling to the wooden floorboards beneath him. He glares after his opponent; she doesn’t flinch.

“Honestly,” she begins, and Levi rises. “I’ve always wanted to do that. Sorry. You okay?”

He licks his lip and brushes his chest down with his hands.

“Fine, _thanks,_ ” he says, shaking his head, and suddenly he’s so fully _in it_ that his own determination startles him. If Eren were here he’d be grinning, pride glowing on his every feature, in his every breath, but Levi shoves the vision away. He isn’t doing this for Eren. “What style?” he asks, as if he knows the difference.

“I don’t care. All of them. Any,” she says, and Levi’s quite sure that that isn’t how fighting works in professional terms. “Just show me what you’ve got,” she finishes, and Levi barely has a second to think before her fists are swinging towards his face, and he’s jumping away from them so fluidly that his mind clouds with the feeling of it. Her hands catch on his t-shirt, occasionally; it’s loose fitting and not something he’d wear if he’d anticipated this, but he twists out of her grips so easily, turning in place and bending to levels he’d forgotten he was capable. He ignores the dull ache in his backside, left over from Eren fucking him the night prior, and continues in this bizarre dance he has found himself in the folds of; he dodges Mikasa’s strikes like he’s played this game countless times, so many times that it’s muscle memory if anything, and it _is_ ; he’d fought himself out of so much trouble in his life that sometimes he doesn’t know how he gets by without it, how he runs a business using nothing but his mind and some mid-level computer literacy at best, wonders how he holds down a home and a relationship without this _thing_ that had been his only existence for so, _so_ long.

At some point they reach the furthest wall of the hall, and Levi has to leap upwards so that he’s vertical against it before kicking himself away so that he’s flying; he lands on his feet, barely, and with the advantage of Mikasa requiring an extra second to spin back towards him he lunges for her, knocking her to the floor and kneeling on her stomach.

His success with the manoeuvre doesn’t last long – he hadn’t underestimated her, so to speak, but he is pleasantly surprised by her relentlessness – and she surges her hips upward, locking his leg with both of hers. She twists so that Levi’s spine collides with the wall before pushing herself away on her stomach and darting upright. He springs upwards so fast that he feels wind break against his face despite the obvious lack of it in the room, and this time when she swings her fist at him, he catches it in his palm, his biceps straining with holding the force of it back. She has sheer momentum on her side, so before he breaks, he swings his other arm up and jabs her in the collar bone, allowing him to glide around her and across the floor so that he has the advantage.

By all means, she’s cornered, and for a minute Levi wonders if a surrender is on the cards; it _isn’t_ , obviously, because as soon as the thought enters his mind, he’s having to dash off to the side again.

Mikasa literally soars at him, like gravity has no hold on her whatsoever, and she so nearly takes him out that he feels her hair graze his cheekbone as she darts past him.

“You just going to dodge me all day?” Mikasa accuses, and it’s reassuring to Levi that she’s beginning to sound a little breathless.

At the suggestion, he shrugs casually and swings his fist toward her face and, some point after that, the whole universe blurs.

Mikasa is lit up by a sudden divine clarity while everything around them fades to black. He intuitively knows her every weakness, and nine out of ten of his swings land as planned so that the tables have turned and she is exclusively dodging _him_ with very little mode of defence; it doesn’t even shock him when she leaps backwards and rolls onto the boxing ring, beneath the red rope that fences it – he jumps, too, twisting sideways so that he glides through the gap in the rope, landing on his knees.

In the time it takes Levi to steady himself, Mikasa moves to perform a roundhouse kick on his face, as she had before, except this time Levi’s fingers curl around her ankle and he flips her, flinging her body across the ring.

Again, and no longer a surprise to him, she jumps up before he can blink.

His downfall occurs somewhere around here.

The adrenaline coursing through him feels like a blue, open flame, and he can almost feel his eyes glazing over with sheer aggression; he doesn’t swing for her, this time. This time, he grabs her throat with his left hand and, like she weighs nothing, he lifts her above the ground, up over his head.

There is a moment when their eyes meet, and Levi thinks he sees shock in hers. He doesn’t wonder what she sees in his, because he knows; he sees it in himself.

He pelts her over his head and she lands, with a bellowing crash, on her back. He turns so quickly that this time she doesn’t rise, and, like he’s done it a million times before, he presses the ball of his foot into her neck.

What scares him isn’t her bulging eyes, and it isn’t the sight of her cheeks blowing out with the effort of each breath. It isn’t the way her fingertips turn purple with the strain of trying to force his foot off her throat, and it isn’t that he knows her strength is enough to counter his – with every extra effort she makes, Levi meets it; not with ease, but not with extreme difficulty, either. What scares him, really shakes him down to his core, is the fact that _he does not feel the need to stop._

It’s only when he realises that neither of them are winning that he feels the blur on the rest of the world ease around him, colour returning to him. By the time he can literally hear his own heartbeat pounding in his ears, he lifts his weight, and Mikasa, to her credit, takes only one long and shuddering breath before sitting upright.

Levi takes a step back from her, but he is not afraid of any counterattack.

He waits for something to happen, but nothing does, really. He waits for her to storm off and call him out for his murderous glare, for his inhumanity – to call Eren, maybe, and inform him that his boyfriend might just be more on the psychotic plane than any of them had anticipated.

Instead, Mikasa’s eyes pass over him, sizing him up quietly.

“Not bad,” she says, her voice hoarse.

She meets his eyes easily, seemingly not cowered in the slightest, and it’s this clement non-action that tumultuously brings him back to earth. He reaches his hand out to her.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice surprising him with its sturdiness. Mikasa takes his hand and rises. She doesn’t look at him; she moves to slide under the rope and hop off the podium, taking a few paces before she leans down and raises a bottle of water to her lips. Levi stands there, waiting, still.

“It’s fine,” she reassures – and it _is_ reassuring, actually – before turning to face him again. “I think we both needed it.”

Admittedly impressed by her strength, he walks toward the ropes and sits down so that his feet are dangling off the edge of the stage. “Huh,” he manages, shaking his head and, actually, yeah. He feels… better, in a way. Stronger. He leans his arms on the rope in front of him. “I guess.”

He takes a minute to lean his head against his arm, breathing heavily but evenly, the power within him both pleasant and daunting. When he looks up, Mikasa has her water bottle pressed against her temple, and he frowns at her. She notices, obvious headache notwithstanding.

“It happens,” she offers, and Levi’s aware of his head tilting in a curious way before he can stop himself.

“To me, too,” he admits.

He sees a colour he doesn’t recognise flash across Mikasa’s eyes; like a bright white gliding over them, like an awareness of something that Levi can’t see, before she shakes her head. Some strands of her fringe fall over her eyes, but Levi is invested, now, in a way he can’t explain.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, hoping his voice is welcoming, but he knows himself and he knows it’s not, doesn’t work on anybody but Eren, he thinks.

“Nothing,” Mikasa says, predictably, moving her hair away from her face. “It’s ridiculous.”

Levi regards her before saying, “Doesn’t look ridiculous,” and the pause that follows has him genuinely tense, until Mikasa lets out a single breath that he knows as her laugh.

“I was just thinking,” she begins, still shaking her head minutely. “It would be stupid if we were related – our surname and everything, links to downtown. You’re not a terrible fighter, either. Weird.”

Levi expects to be disgruntled by the suggestion but, instead, he hums lowly and considers the proposition. “Stranger things have happened,” he reasons, and he doesn’t miss the way Mikasa’s head _snaps_ towards him, swears he can hear it. He shrugs and looks away. “We could… look into it, I suppose. If you were interested.”

He doesn’t know what makes him say the words, except for the fact that saying them makes him think of Isabel and Farlan, of Uncle Kenny, and how they are the only family he has ever known. He has never had a significant sense of reliability where family are concerned – he remembers being young, too young, Kenny moving to disappear and Levi grabbing his arm. He was _tiny,_ then, but his grip on him was still enough for the adult to turn and squint at him. _We’re family,_ Levi had gritted, angry more than anything, and Kenny had tilted is head in an oddly affectionate way and said, _blood’s thicker than water, huh, kid?_ And Levi had nodded, naïve as he was, because he didn’t fully understand the metaphor at the time, but it made sense, somehow. Kenny had scoffed and said, _don’t concern yourself wit’ anybody’s blood ‘part from what’s flowing through your own damn veins, Levi,_ and had left. Levi didn’t see him again for months, after that, and he didn’t feel the loss as he usually would have. His words had stuck.

“Would it really matter?” Mikasa asks, and perhaps it’s a testament to Levi having spent so much time with Eren that he hears the ‘ _to you?’_ that should have been on the end of the question.

“No,” he answers, honestly. “No, it wouldn’t.”

They sit in oddly companionable silence after that. Still, it comes as a relief to him when Mikasa sighs loudly and moves across the hall to ruffle through her gym bag. When she rises, she throws something at Levi that he catches easily, and when he sees its keys, he feels… grateful, he thinks. Grateful for her.

“Go clean up,” she says, quite soft, actually, and it makes Levi uncomfortable. “I’m not finished.”

He slides out from beneath the rope and paces back toward the door he had entered through. He has a lot of things he should be thinking about, probably, aside from the need to shower and brush his teeth and _sort himself out_ , but when he pauses at the door, there’s only really one thing he _wants_ to say.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, and Mikasa nods quietly. There’s a tentative smile ghosting her lips that Levi finds a fellowship in, and he returns it.

He spends an absurd amount of time in the shower, the heat turned up as high as he can withstand.

***

There’s brown rainwater dripping down the walls when he walks into the room, and at the sight, he ridicules himself for his evident and _ridiculous_ nostalgic urges.

He hasn’t been here in a long time; the walls are black, now, and the vague remnants of paint on the bricks has peeled and withered so that they look scaled, monstrous. The water dripping into the fireplace sounds like a waterfall and it is all that Levi can hear.

It feels useless being here, but still, he stays. He turns in the centre of the room and regards the building, trying to feel fond but actually just feeling _angry._

When he had lived here, Isabel and Farlan by his side, it had never been a matter of choice, just need. It was wildly convenient; there were plenty of abandoned buildings around town, but none so easy to access, none so inconspicuous as this.

It had been a dry cleaner’s, once, with a couple of flats stacked above it. On the ground floor, there are still the outdated and crippled skeletons of washing machines lining the walls and a small desk at the front, but old newspapers obscure the interior from the streets. There’s an old sign painted in large lead paint across the front, and he thinks it’s the _est. 1850_ that allows for its discretion; most people assume it’s listed. It isn’t, but it’s old enough to be, and it quickly became his first real idea of home.

He’s pretty certain asbestos cakes the whole place but that had never bothered him; still doesn’t, apparently, because sometimes he feels so _himself_ in this run-down piece of shit that nothing else matters, lungs and all.

He’s never felt the need to buy it, renovate it, _clean it_ , which should strike him as odd, but… it doesn’t, actually. He quite likes the grime being encased here; it isn’t a part of his life anymore – he fights damn hard to make sure of that – but knowing this monument remains, that this testament to his life before still breathes while he moves on – it’s comforting, he thinks. His anger at the systems that had forced his life here to be so… how it _was,_ almost saves him from wanting the place torn down. Without it, he loses a lot of himself, he thinks; loses his shadow, his truth.

When he’s here, he tries not to think of the terribleness of their lives; Isabel had been a teenager – she’s a little older than Eren now, a _woman,_ but she had seemed so small, then. They all did, really; they were street-smart, got by using sheer strength and _cunning_ , and had risen high enough that they had found the other floors of the building occupied with squatters they had taken under their wing in almost no time at all, but they were _kids,_ and knowing that as an adult makes him shudder.

What he thinks about instead are the endless nights spent curled around Isabel and Farlan, the three of them breathing all over each other, and how the contact never unnerved Levi as it might have because it was borne of a need for warmth, for survival; it hadn’t terrified him as much as the first night he’d spent with Eren, anyway.

Now, Eren’s arms are just warm, just _Eren;_ they’re home, to him, but he’s tethered to his past regardless, inexorably.

Being here reminds him of who he is, what he came from, the sense of _responsibility_. He had been their unelected leader, had done all in his power to keep Farlan, Isabel and the others out of the firing line; while he still feels distressed by the notion of friendship, he knows he has a kinship with them that he will never have with anybody else.

He hasn’t told Isabel or Farlan about Eren’s drawings or his bizarre moods, and he doesn’t think he ever wants to. He thinks of them, though, in the instances where Eren feels disconcertingly far away from him, as he does now.

He still doesn’t understand why his head aches so spontaneously like this, but he sits down when it hits him, on the damp floor, breathing in pure mildew, and he feels… a _need_ , suddenly.

His instincts are to force the intrusion away. He hates how things are now, it makes him _rage,_ actually, but–

Spending time with Mikasa has unearthed something in him. It’s how ardently she adores Eren, most likely, how she reminds Levi of him while simultaneously being so obviously _separate_ from him. He wonders how he would feel if Isabel was seeing someone and they turned up at his house saying how Isabel had pissed them off, how their lives had turned to shit, and he feels anger. He doesn’t know how Mikasa stifled it.

He grazes his tongue over his swollen lip and realises that, actually, she didn’t.

He owes Eren something, probably.

The feeling that he needs to _provide_ something other than just himself is not a new one; he had felt it from the first time he’d agreed to a date with Eren, the second and the third; he’d felt it the first time they’d fucked, despite how much Levi himself had wanted it; he felt it the first time Eren suggested that they move in together. Now, though, he owes it to Eren to just _try._

They’d faced innumerable obstacles before, mostly in the form of Levi’s neurosis, and now that Eren presents him with something that _he_ doesn’t want to handle… all at once, he feels as though he’s committed an atrocity against his relationship, against his new life.

He closes his eyes and lies down, feels the damp soaking into his clothes; it makes his skin itch, but he pointedly disregards it, channels all of his effort into the dull aching in his head, and considers where he could possibly start.

Eren slips into his mind seamlessly, like he belongs there, always has and, for once, he feels too _easy_ an option. He needs to dig deeper. His mind seeks his friends out instead.

He thinks of Isabel spilling tea all over the counter when they had first viewed the café, and her guilty grin as she cleaned it up. His head twinges. He thinks of Farlan the first time he bought a suit, the way he’d looked coy as he pulled the cuffs down his arms and ruffled his hair. It aches. He thinks of teaching Isabel to drive, how she had sent them zigzagging down the path and Levi had had to grab the steering wheel, but she had seemed so _thrilled,_ and it throbs. He sees her with adorable red pigtails, then sees her caked in sunlight, a bird flying from her cupped hands; he sees Farlan eyeing him challengingly, urging him, timelessly, to do the right thing, and he sees him bumping their fists together boisterously and with _pride_ and, now, Levi’s whole body trembles ferociously. He watches the bird fly through a slim slit in the earth, into the sky above, and he hears himself groaning before he feels the shattering, the _piercing_ agony of – of –

Of Isabel’s decapitated head. Of Farlan’s chest torn from the rest of his body, gut and ligament spilling out of him as he falls limply to the soggy earth.

Isabel’s pigtails are intact, he notices. They bunch out beautifully and he thinks – _fuck_ – he thinks of daffodils.

He doesn’t know when he stood up, but he feels it when his toes crack against the wall and shards of brick begin to litter the creaking floorboards.

Profanities escape his lips endlessly as he kicks and kicks until the brick looks like it’s crumbling to sawdust in front of him. He ignores the rainwater as it falls against the hands that hold him up against the wall and as it splashes against his face because it doesn’t matter, actually; might, later, but there’s so much blood in his mind, on his hands, that he urges the water to fall freely, now, to wash the whole building out, to cascade over him and purge his life – his _lives_ , away, until there is nothing left, just dust and earth and birds chirping obliviously into wide, open skies.

***

Opening his front door when he finds his way home has him hesitating, and it makes him hate himself.

He’d stayed at the old building for far longer than he’d intended – the migraine that followed his efforts had incapacitated him, and even when it had eased, he knew driving wasn’t his safest option – and now the sky is that bizarre suburban blue that looks hued, blurred, and _dark_ , like a muffled version of the sky he knows. It had stopped raining hours ago, but still, he shivers.

The house is no warmer when he enters, though; it’s _colder_ , even, and he frowns worriedly.

“ _Eren?_ ” he calls, his voice sharp; he had been anxious about addressing anything with Eren at all, but these things don’t come easily to him, and all he feels now is _panic._

He expects the lack of response, but still it unsettles him, and the drag of his feet against the hallway’s carpet alarms him in its urgency; it feels like he knows something, knows _beyond_ the panic that he is _needed_ , that something is _wrong,_ so very wrong, and he knows that Eren is home; knows because Eren never locks the front door, the _idiot,_ and he knows because he feels it deep within himself, feels it like he feels the hairs on his arms rising in vigilance and in _fear_ , and he bounds through the house carelessly, ripping doors open and letting them slam at full force against the walls; it only echoes the pounding in his head, anyway.

It’s when he reaches the back door and yanks it open that he finds him, and now he freezes, the world falling eerily silent.

Eren is kneeling in the centre of the garden. He must have been there for a while, because around his knees and up his thighs the damp from the earth has darkened the blue of his jeans; his hair, though tied back, has fallen messily over his face and his hands are raised, levitating in front of his naked chest, blood dripping from them so copiously that the grass looks black with it – now, Levi can’t tell if the darkness on Eren’s jeans is from the rain or from the blood, but he notices when Eren’s eyes raise from the gruesome mess he’s made of his limbs and lock onto Levi.

The terror he sees in them is palpable; his pupils tremor and the vibrant green, turquoise, and all sorts of brilliant colours that Levi can usually spy in Eren’s gaze are gone, nothing but a meagre grey remaining, and when Levi watches Eren’s outstretched hands tremble with urgency, reaching out across the grass and toward him, it’s as though lightning has struck his body from above and he simply _knows_.

He levels Eren with a stare and, pushing past his own horror as it grips him vehemently, he nods once; his jaw is tense and his lips are pulled tight, but he nods sternly, reassuringly, answering an unspoken question.

When Eren’s eyebrows tilt upward in a poignant expression of relief, a loud and quivering sob escaping his mouth and his upper body working with gravity toward the floor, Levi moves with such momentum to catch him that the weight of Eren’s shuddering body pressing against him barely registers.

“I know,” he soothes, uselessly. The noises that come out of Eren are indiscernible, plaintive, and perhaps not meant to be heard at all, so Levi pushes forward, scrambling for his own resolve.

“Come on,” Levi urges, his hands beneath Eren’s armpits while Eren buries his face against Levi’s chest. His hair is wet, and he wonders if Eren had been out here while it was raining earlier, or if it’s from a build-up of pure sweat given that the heat coming off him feels _impossible._ “Come on, let me clean you up,” he says, ensuring that his voice carries over Eren’s laboured breathing. He lifts him upright forcefully, then, and pulls one of Eren’s bloodied arms over his shoulder for support.

Levi keeps his eyes forward as they move.

The hard part isn’t dragging Eren’s uncooperative body into the house and up the stairs; it isn’t the scorching heat radiating from his body, either, making Levi sweat; it isn’t from the sheer mass of him, either, because Levi has never struggled in terms of brute strength and he does not falter now.

The hard part is setting Eren down atop the closed toilet lid when they reach the bathroom; the hard part is, when Levi turns to run the bath, Eren’s stained hand grips his wrist tightly, so tightly that Levi audibly hisses; the hard part is looking into Eren’s eyes and seeing absolutely nothing there but a deafening fear, his bottom lip trembling; the hard part is the way Levi had spent so long avoiding the inevitability of his whole world crashing and burning around him when, looking at Eren now, _his Eren_ , he realises that it already had, long before he had been able to accept it as such.

He lets Eren hold onto him as he runs the bath, moving only slightly to adjust the heat and to pour some of the lavender scented, muscle relaxant bubble bath that he knows Eren likes into it, and his heart twinges at the way their day-to-day life from _before_ bleeds so seamlessly into this chaos, into this brutal existence that he would have had to have been delirious to predict.

Eren rises on his own when Levi switches the bathwater off and Levi looks over to him questioningly when the wet grip on his wrist eases; he watches as Eren’s hands move feebly to unbutton his jeans, watches as his chest heaves with a wince that Levi _feels,_ when his fingers stutter in their movements and Levi moves to stand in front of him, gently moving Eren’s arms aside.

“Let me,” he offers, and a single, tender sob is all the consent that Eren provides him with.

He strips Eren quickly but softly, careful not to agitate him, and he lets Eren lean his forearm on his shoulder as he lowers himself into the bath slowly, nervously, until the water comes up to his chest and his head falls back weakly against the basin.

“Give me a minute,” Levi says, and Eren’s frown appears so stubborn and petulant that it’s comfortingly familiar. He shakes his head softly at his partner and manages a tight smile. “I’ll be right back, I promise. Your hands.”

Eren’s eyes pinch into something unreadable, now, but he grunts, and Levi makes his way downstairs as quickly as his feet allow him.

He takes the bowl from the kitchen sink and washes it quickly before filling it to the brim with warm water. He moves toward a high cupboard above the kettle, the cabinet Eren calls his ‘office’ because it’s full of first-aid related things that _you’re going to need around if you’re living with me_ and the memory is as irritating as the warning is accurate.

He pulls out bandages and a small bar of soap that he lathers under the tap before dropping into the bowl. He pulls out a cloth and begins to rinse that, too, and he carries the bowl upstairs carefully.

When he returns to the bathroom, Eren’s eyes are only half-open and he seems to gaze after something that Levi cannot see. Steam rises above him and he wonders if it’s from the bath or from Eren himself. He places his equipment onto the floor and returns downstairs only briefly to pour Eren a glass of icy water.

He lifts it to Eren’s lips and his eyes twitch in Levi’s direction, but he doesn’t fight, this time; he parts his lips and drinks from the glass generously.

“Good,” Levi mutters, placing the glass beside the sink and pulling up the lidded bin for him to sit on while he works.

Eren doesn’t say anything while Levi cleans his hands, the water in the bowl quickly turning a dark and alarming brown. He barely flinches, actually, although the wounds are shockingly deep and will almost definitely need _some_ professional medical attention. Normally, Eren would mostly be able to sort this out himself. Levi tries not to think about whether he’s doing a poor job of it, because he doesn’t think Eren will mind at all, if he ever comes back to himself. _When_ he comes back to himself.

Levi does not say anything when the blood clears and the flow stems enough for him to discern that the wounds are in the formation of human teeth, though it does puzzle him; he doesn’t say anything when he sees the startlingly purple bruises on his knuckles, either. He knows where they’re from.

Eventually, Levi wraps the bandages around Eren’s hand himself, tender as he can manage and when he’s complete, Eren’s hands fall either side of the bathtub naturally. Levi can feel his eyes on him, but he ignores them, and without thought he places his forehead against Eren’s forearm where it hangs over the edge of the bath, not caring for the heat as it irritates his skin or for the dampness against his hair. He lets the silence envelope them, tunes into Eren’s soft breathing, and he wonders when his life had become this.

He realises it’s a fruitless curiosity. His life had been full of Eren from the second he’d bounded into the café the first time, his hair windswept and his grin eager; from the first time Eren had held his hand as they walked along the cobbled paths in town and had smiled at him sheepishly; from all the times they had kissed and had talked and had fucked and had held each other so closely that Levi wonders how by now they have not merged into one completely.

His life had been full of Eren from the very start and, he thinks, he might have ended up here in any version of reality as it was presented to him. It’s always Eren, always will be and always would have been, and he submits himself to it if that is his role; accepts it, finally, that he breathes for himself but that he lives for Eren.

“No,” Eren mumbles from his side, and Levi lifts his head in scrutiny. Eren’s eyes are still half-lidded, his eyelashes almost flush against his damp cheeks, but he’s gathered the strength to shake his head and Levi frowns all the more. “I know what you’re thinking, and no. This isn’t fair, Levi.”

“What are you saying no to?”

“To _this_ ,” Eren manages, his voice still choked and straining against his throat. His eyebrows are pulled into an angry frown. “To this being your life now. It’s so unfair. I’m so sorry – I don’t know why…” the words get lost in a weak sob that is not sad, is borne out of a strangling frustration; Levi can see it in the way Eren’s nose has scrunched up and his lips are twisted in a grimace.

He loves him, Levi thinks uselessly, and he kisses Eren’s arm softly, feels the muscles inside it twitch responsively, ignores the discomfort in his still swollen lip.

“I haven’t been fair,” Levi levels, leaning his cheek against the place he had just pressed his lips and meeting Eren’s watery gaze. “I haven’t listened to you, and I’ve tried _very_ hard to avoid having to. We could have done a million things differently, but we didn’t. It’s no use worrying about it now. I’m here.”

“You were right today,” Eren sniffles, but there is power in his tone that Levi is a little impressed by. He twitches his eyebrows questioningly, and Eren swallows. “You – _I_ should go. This is so _stupid_. _I’m_ so –”

“No, Eren,” Levi says, urging his voice to be soft in the way that Eren likes it, that Eren is so receptive to. He lifts his head and shifts his makeshift seat a little closer to the tub, placing his hand over Eren’s arm. He looks into his eyes _pointedly_ , this time. “It isn’t stupid. I’ve turned a blind eye to it, is all. _You’re_ not stupid. None of this is stupid – we just don’t know what we’re dealing with, or how to. It’s okay. We fucked up. It’s allowed.” Alarmed by his own conviction, Levi searches deep within himself for a cynical contradiction and, to his comfort, finds none. His blood boils at his own lack of care where Eren has been concerned, at his naïve belief that in shutting down his every attempt at communication he was protecting him. He had left Eren completely alone, trapped inside his own torment. _Never again_.

There is still a tangible trace of terror in Levi’s veins, but he pushes past it as he had downtown earlier. His instinct is to flee but he will not, he knows. He will not, ever. He has no desire to leave this life behind, to say goodbye to Eren in any capacity, to reduce himself to the monochrome existence he had led before. He thinks that cowardice does not suit him, however deeply he feels it. One more soul to save, he thinks. He will do this.

“Nobody’s going anywhere,” he declares, his decision final. Eren blinks at him. “Together, Eren. We’ll deal with this _together_ , from now on.”

When Eren says nothing, unmoving except to blink dumbly a few times, Levi gives his arm a squeeze with his fingers.

“That’s that,” he affirms, tilting his eyebrows at Eren and almost daring him to argue with the order. Eren does not, thankfully, but when he opens his mouth next Levi’s stomach churns uncomfortably.

“So you do remember?”

His voice is careful in a way it never usually is and Levi can only blame himself for that. Despite his dubiousness over Eren’s newfound obsessions, he cannot deny the severity of them any longer. He’s through with tiptoeing around them, now. He’ll walk straight through them all.

“No,” he says, truthfully, and Eren’s shoulders slump a little deeper into the water. “We should talk about it properly some other time, because I mean it when I say I don’t fully understand what it is you’re talking about when you say these things,” he doesn’t know why, but he presses another kiss against Eren’s arm before continuing, his eyebrows pulled into each other with thought and concern about speaking his truth so boldly. “I don’t know what you can see but, I did try to access it myself, today.”

Eren blinks at him again and opens his mouth in what looks like wonder. Levi shrugs.

“I felt like I owed you something,” he admits, and Eren chews his lip in response. “I tried and I saw some… things,” he swallows at the memory of Isabel’s slack and lifeless face. “Clearly, none of this makes any sense, and we should be talking to doctors or, _psychiatrists_ about it, probably, but…” he sighs, hating that this is his reality but accepting it as such regardless. “It seems that I _can_ remember, if I try. This… other world of yours. Quite… vividly, too.”

“I’m sorry,” Eren breathes quietly. His face has fallen into one of utter remorse, of pity, almost, and Levi shakes his head.

“Me, too,” he says, wafting his wrist in front of him dismissively. “I don’t know what any of it means or if it matters at all but… it’s there, so. Yeah. I guess.”

“Thank you,” Eren says, his head leaning lazily against his shoulder. The smallest of smiles is present on his tired features and Levi wills the butterflies in his chest to stop.

Levi nods and rubs his thumb along Eren’s arm.

“Together,” Eren speaks into the silence and Levi forces a smile in affirmation, hoping to calm Eren further, already having decided that if they are going to delve into this as Eren’s main source of struggle and pain, that they should do it another day after a lot of rest and a lot of nothingness. He’s already eager to get Eren out of the bath, into something comfy and onto the couch. They should watch a film, he thinks, or start a series before bed. Before they have to really _work_ together. He doesn’t know which of them would benefit from it more. He just knows he needs to be close to Eren, now, and always, and forever. He’s in this. Should have been from the beginning.

“You left your phone here this morning,” Eren says suddenly and Levi shrugs.

“Huh,” he says, not realising it himself. “I guess I did.”

Eren nods and swallows. “Hanji’s been ringing you,” he says, and Levi feels the way his skin pricks and pales at the words.

“What did they want?” Levi asks, trying to remain calm. He smooths his hand along Eren’s arm to prevent himself from grabbing it.

“I don’t know,” Eren admits, smiling guiltily. “They’ve been ringing me, too. I really… well.” He looks down at his bandaged hands and Levi nods in understanding; he clearly would not have been up for a chat today, at any point, probably, but still.

“I understand, but it might’ve been important, Eren,” Levi sighs, adjusting himself and standing upright. “I’m gonna’ call–”

“ _No,_ ” Eren growls, suddenly. He moves to grab Levi’s wrist but flinches when he can’t move his fingers past the bandages. Levi looks at him and Eren’s eyes are pleading. His own exhaustion makes it incredibly hard to reject the suggestion. “No, not tonight, please. Tomorrow. It can wait until tomorrow. Please.”

Levi licks his lips. One last night, he thinks. One last night without knowing, perhaps. Hange had never rang them before if not to relay regular results; they had certainly never called _him,_ but the wonder as to how they got his number is stifled by the thick dread that falls into his stomach, that makes his whole body tense and his eyes sting.

“Eren…” he warns, because he knows he should be calling Hange back right now. He knows it.

“It’s probably nothing anyway,” Eren argues, and Levi so wants to believe it. “I’ll ring them first thing tomorrow.”

Eren’s eyes are wide again, now. So beautiful, he thinks. So vibrant and so alive. Levi sighs loudly and bows his head in defeat.

“Okay,” he whispers, suddenly and _embarrassingly_ just wanting to be held. “Okay,” he repeats, softer, and Eren’s smile is weak but alight, so appreciative, that he struggles to feel remorse at his own complicity in this decisively stupid avoidance.

He helps Eren wash his body and his hair before helping him dress. They’re mostly silent except for Eren asking what Levi had been up to today, Levi telling him honestly, and, upon hearing of his battle with Mikasa, Eren laughs loudly and the sound warms Levi from the inside out.

“No fucking way,” he gasps, thrilled. It should surprise him how quickly Eren is able to bounce back from moderate mania or significant incapacitation to his usual self, but it doesn’t, really, not anymore. He just welcomes it. “Did you kick her ass?”

Eren’s smile is infectious. Everything about Eren is infectious; he lives under Levi’s skin, now. Levi grins fondly as he pulls a night shirt over Eren’s head.

"Of course, I kicked her ass,” Levi confirms, and Eren howls.

When they settle down onto the living room couch (bowls of Super Noodles in their laps because they had both neglected to feed themselves all day and Eren is notoriously impatient), their shoulders naturally bump together and they remain like that, facing the television. Eren’s warmth still seeps into Levi’s skin.

Eren loves Moulin Rouge, and this no longer confuses Levi, because Christian reminds him of Eren in so many ways, in his boldness and his tenacity and his stark belief in _love_ , that Levi finds himself enjoying the musical, too. When Eren asks for them to watch it tonight, Levi doesn’t complain, not at all.

The two of them squeeze into the corner of the sofa, Levi’s arm across the armrest and Eren’s head against his chest, beneath his other arm. Eren sings along the whole way through, as if there isn’t a single thing going through his mind, as if he had not cut himself bloody just a few hours ago, as if they both aren’t plagued by these bizarre new memories and feelings and alienation from the lives they have lived so far. He realises that Eren may be thinking along the same lines as him. One last night where they’re just, this. One last night where they’re just Levi and Eren. One last night of this beautiful life.

When the Come What May finale begins, Levi realises that Eren has fallen asleep because he usually sings along dramatically and tearfully and tries to drag Levi into it. He doesn’t, though; Levi watches the scene anyway, lets the film end, and while he isn’t one to be drawn in by these sorts of things, the platitude of ‘ _the greatest thing you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return’_ does, actually, tug at his heartstrings a little this time. He scrapes his fingers through Eren’s hair, dry, now, and untied so that it falls over his shoulder prettily.

One last night, he thinks to himself as he keeps watch over Eren’s sleeping form. One last night, he repeats, both a comforting mantra and a mournful litany.

He kisses Eren’s temple and smooths his hands over his arms and his chest for a long time before he submits to his own weariness, and when he shifts to a more comfortable position, hears Eren murmur a sleepy ‘…lov yuh’, he breathes it back easily, feels it so truly that he wonders how the words never came so naturally to him before.

“I love you too, Eren.”

***

Levi stares at the phone in his hands for a long time.

He had left Eren asleep on the couch, not wanting to wake him, yearning for Eren to live in obliviousness for as long as he could assure. He sits slumped over the edge of their made bed, now, but being faced with the 72 missed calls from a number he doesn’t have saved to his contacts, along with just as many voicemails that he adamantly does not want to listen to, has him frozen in place.

He feels bile rise into his throat and he swallows it down a number of times before he unlocks his phone, the soft click shattering the silence around him so aggressively that he almost flinches.

“Don’t.”

He looks up to see Eren stood in the doorway. His hair is matted from sleep but the rest of his body is alert and tense. His eyes are dark and he’s reminded of the urge he had felt to flinch away from Eren in the kitchen only two days ago; he doesn’t know where that feeling had come from, still doesn’t entirely want to, but he feels it echo in his chest at Eren’s face as it is right now; he’s frightening, almost. Deadly serious. Levi looks at him sadly.

“I have to, Eren,” he says. Eren breathes deeply. “I’m sorry.”

“I know whatever they have to say isn’t the real problem,” he retorts, desperately. “I know it’s something to do with all the memories, something to do with… something _else._ ”

Levi presses his lips together for a moment and lifts his head fully to look at Eren. “I said we could talk about all of that another time.”

“I know, but–”

“But this is the hospital, and it could be serious. Or it could _explain_ where your memories are coming from. We can’t know.”

“That won’t explain where _yours_ have come from,” he tries, suddenly looking a lot smaller than a moment ago. Levi shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. He stares at Eren for a long moment and Eren stares back; his gaze must speak volumes because eventually Eren nods his head resolutely, his fate accepted.

Levi swipes his finger along the phone screen, over the last notification he’d received the night prior, and presses the phone to his ear.

It rings for less than a second before he hears Hange’s voice.

“Oh my fucking God,” they screech, and Levi swallows. “I’m on my way to your place now, Levi, I’ve been trying to get in touch with you both fucking _tirelessly.”_

Levi doesn’t think he has ever heard them sound so frantic and his chest bubbles with nausea. He has heard them erratic and enthusiastic and curious and perhaps _worried_ , but not like this. Not so urgent.

He can’t find the words so he breathes down the phone and hopes that they can say what they need to say quickly. Rip it off like a plaster. Spit it out like the venom Levi feels in his mouth.

They let out a sigh and Levi hears a car door slam shut.

“How quickly can you both get to the hospital?”

Levi breathes again, his hand tightening around the device. “Soon,” he manages, his eyes piercing through the floor.

“ _Good,_ ” Hange spits, their anger still quite prominent in their voice. “Good. Make it _quick,_ Levi.”

“What–?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re here. I have to speak to him in person; it’s protocol, and it can’t be avoided, so will you _please_ get in your car and get here. Now.”

Surprised by the authority in their tone, Levi nods. The dread is all-consuming, now, and it makes his heart pound loudly against his chest. “We’re on our way, then,” he says and, at a loud huff from Hange, the line goes dead.

He lowers the phone slowly. He cannot possibly know what to expect and the need to know is both demanding and gut-curdling. He both wants to know and wants to pretend that the last month had never happened. He wants to go back to last night; he wants a million more _one last night’s_ , wants that for Eren, too, but they can’t. They can’t.

He looks up slowly and apologetically at his partner, but his eyes widen at the sight before him.

“Eren,” he murmurs, and Eren frowns.

Blood is dripping from his nose, down into his mouth, and Eren raises a hand curiously. It stains the white bandages around them, and he studies the spatter with a look of childish intrigue. He glances up at Levi with wide eyes and Levi grinds his teeth. Again, Eren says nothing about the bad habit. He blinks a few times in quick succession before nodding his head. Levi stands, passing Eren a tissue from their bedside table, and begins getting ready.

The house is quiet apart from the sounds of them moving around each other and preparing for the day wordlessly. He texts Isabel saying he won’t be in work, to get Farlan in for cover. She replies with, _Okay, done. Love you, bro._

He doesn’t respond, just gets in the car at the same time as Eren, and drives.

***

He’s been in Hange’s office before, discussing theories and results, but when he enters it this time the blinds are closed and it is lit by a single lamp on a scattered desk. The room is riddled in dark shadows, and Hange offers no greeting aside from their previously spoken _‘Come in.’_ Levi suddenly feels that the air he is breathing is stale.

Hange looks up from their computer when Eren and Levi lower themselves into the two seats opposite. They are both silent, and Levi can see Eren picking at a loose bit of bandage on his wrist. He thinks he should be holding his hand. That’s usually what these sorts of environments look like, isn’t it? A united front, an anxious patient and a doting lover.

Him and Eren _are_ united, he thinks, but an outward display of affection doesn’t feel right. It would feel like a performance, and Hange wouldn’t appreciate it anyway, he knows. He looks at Eren and hopes he can feel Levi’s presence across the small space between them. Eren’s eyelids flicker, his gaze shifting to the side once, and Levi nods. He knows.

Hange’s smile is tight and restrained, oxymoronic to their personality, and Levi wants the floor to open up and swallow him whole.

Their eyes graze over Eren’s hands, though, and they frown. “Get hungry?” they ask, and Eren sputters.

“I – _how_ –?”

Hange shakes their head softly. “No matter,” they say, resolve returned to them, but Levi is also flummoxed by their words. He grounds himself. One, two, three, four, five; five, four, three, two, one.

"Alright,” they begin, and Levi’s world seems to tilt on a steep axis, gravity failing him; he feels like he is going to slip from his chair and across the earth, into the sea, deep into space. They look at Eren. “As you know we’ve been checking your bloods regularly for developments.”

Eren nods.

“I don’t really know how to say this to you, Eren,” they continue, their face suddenly contorted in pain. “You should have a suspicion, anyway. You’re a sound nurse and by now you should be noticing some symptoms. You should also be aware that we’re going to need a bone marrow sample from you, today, preferably.”

Levi frowns and snaps his head between the pair. Eren’s jaw is tense and it unnerves Levi further, feeling alarmingly left out of the loop. He wants to scream.

Eren sits straighter in his seat and rolls his shoulders. “Chemo or radio?” he grits, and Hange swallows.

“Depends,” they say, and Levi is truly struggling to keep up. “Chemo, most likely, but–”

Eren’s laugh erupts from him so viscerally that Levi has to grind his fingernails into the wooden armrests at his side, and even Hange recoils back into their desk chair.

It is loud and piercing, echoing off the walls of the small room, and Levi is stunned by it. He has never heard such a sound leave Eren’s throat before now; it is animal, almost, _vicious,_ and when he looks at Eren he sees he is keeled over his knees, his face toward the floor, his hair obscuring his face. He watches lamely as a few tears fall down his nose and collide with the rug beneath their feet.

“Eren,” Levi manages, eventually, and this time he does reach a hand out to him.

Eren laughs louder.

“Hange,” Levi tries, instead, looking toward her desperately. His arm is still outstretched, but it does not make contact. They look at him, subdued and patient, but clearly startled.

Eren quietens down enough for them to speak, and Levi listens.

“Eren’s white blood cells are concerning,” Hange explains. “He has been producing quite a lot more than normal _anyway_ but given the sickness that he first came to us with, that’s no surprise. To be more specific, it seems to our haematology department that the myeloid cells Eren is producing are underdeveloped, and they’re beginning to overtake the healthy ones.”

“What does that _mean,_ four-eyes?” Levi snaps. He ignores his shaking hand, his crumbling resolve, at how weak and at how stupid he suddenly feels.

“We need a bone marrow sample, ideally, but–”

“Cancer!” Eren shouts, suddenly, and he flies so that he is stood in the middle of the room, towering over both Levi and Hange. His smile is manic, the rims of his eyes red, and he looks positively nuclear, in this moment. Looks like he truly could explode, now. His gaze turns to meet Levi’s. “ _Cancer_ , honey,” he says, still laughing, slightly, but Levi is frozen. “Isn’t that just _something?_ ”

“Eren,” Levi manages, but he can’t think of what to say. Can’t find any strength left within him, whatsoever.

“It’s not cancer,” Eren says, confusingly. He covers his face with his hands before gliding the bandages over his long hair. “It isn’t. I know it isn’t.”

“Eren,” Hange tries, this time.

“I’m so fucking _sick_ of this,” he yells, and while Levi has always been aware of Eren’s temper, his social skills have always far surpassed his fieriness and Levi is shocked by the venom in his voice. It isn’t directed at anybody in particular, but Levi notices how Hange flinches away from the words.

Eren scoffs and turns toward the door. Levi’s eyes follow him and he doesn’t know how he manages it, but his legs force him into standing anyway. He follows.

“We’re going home,” Eren calls over his shoulder. Levi doesn’t logically think this is the right thing to do. He thinks they should stay, he thinks he needs to know more, but he also thinks he could lose Eren to this mania that’s overtaken him and he so aches to be at home. He so wants to be able to reach him again so they can do this, whatever _this_ is, together.

“Eren, we need to–” Hange begins, desperate, but Eren is already halfway down the hallway and the sentence stammers to a weak end halfway through.

Levi pauses at the door and glances back. Hange eyes him hopelessly, pleadingly, and, the weight of the world on his shoulders, the weight of _Eren_ heavy on his heart, he nods at them, and leaves quietly.

 _Together,_ he thinks, desperately. _Together._

***

“Calm down.”

Levi isn’t sure how he can say the words so convincingly, because he feels many things right now and calm is not one of them. Still, he forces himself to stay in position, sat on the middle of the sofa in the living room where they had slept last night. Eren paces across the floor, around the coffee table. He keeps trying to drag his fingers through his hair before remembering his injuries and lowering them.

“I promise I’m not crazy,” he says, his voice hoarse.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Levi reassures, though really his mind feels numb, his thoughts not processing fully. He doesn’t know _what_ he thinks, exactly.

“I know this isn’t as straight forward as cancer,” Eren barks, and Levi stifles a sigh. He hates that word. He hates it so much. “It can’t be.”

Levi lets the silence sit heavy for a few moments and, gladly, Eren’s pacing begins to stall, get slower. Levi frowns, suddenly, remembering something.

“Hange mentioned symptoms,” he says, and Eren stops in his tracks to look at him. Levi squints back. “What symptoms have you had?”

Eren grumbles to himself quietly, but Levi waits patiently. Eren moves to sit on the couch adjacent to Levi’s, his elbows on his knees.

“I didn’t think anything of it till that nosebleed this morning,” he says. “I’ve lost some weight, but then again I’ve not been going to the gym. Yesterday morning, those bruises appeared almost out of nowhere, instantly, which I _know_ is weird, but… it also aligned with one of these fucking memories, so, it’s gotta’ be related to that somehow, right? This fever hasn’t budged, it feels like my skin’s trying to tear itself apart, honestly, I’ve _had it_ with it. I guess I’m a little achey, but I figured it was all down to the first episode, anyway. I went into shock, is all. Sasha. Like I told you. _Memories_.”

Levi frowns. He had not noticed any of this, and he certainly didn’t think Eren had lost weight, apart from–

He recalls noticing Eren’s defined muscles, aweing at them slightly, and he wants to pinch himself. _Buffing out?_ He’s not fitter at all. He’s wasting away.

“Your blood pressure,” he says, curious, mostly. “What about that?”

Eren shakes his head. “Mine was high, after the episode. I’ve never known that to be a symptom of this cancer. A drop, maybe, but not an increase.”

Levi hums, but he feels cold and washed out and so, so drained.

“That’s what I _mean,_ ” Eren speaks again, determined, and Levi blinks. “So much doesn’t add up. I _know_ I’m missing something. I know there’s something I _should_ know, but can’t remember. It isn’t _cancer,_ Levi.”

Levi so wants to believe him. He’s desperate to.

"Hange sounded quite convinced,” Levi tries. “We should – you should let them check you over. Rule it out.”

Eren shakes his head and Levi wants to grab him and shake him.

“Are you refusing because you know it isn’t cancer, or are you refusing because you know it is and you don’t want to be right?”

Eren’s eyes go wide at the question, so very wide, before they squint harshly. He stands up and moves quickly to sit beside Levi. Eren’s warm, bandaged hand cups his own and he lets him, for some reason. He’s so tired.

Eren bears into him something ferocious, and Levi just looks at him. He’s so beautiful, even like this, and Levi just wants to keep him still, to keep him happy, for as long as possible. But this is so serious, could be _so serious,_ and he can’t just pretend anymore. He can’t.

“Levi,” Eren begins, squeezing Levi’s fingers. “Can we – can we talk–”

Levi groans loudly and presses his hands into his eye sockets, leaning back against the couch cushions.

“Please,” Eren begs, and Levi has to breathe deeply before returning to the reality in front of him. “Please, I need to remember. I need to know what happened in this – this other life. It’s – it’s tearing me _apart_.”

Levi lowers his hands and looks at his partner and that urge to fight against the words is there, so present and so hard to overcome, but he stomachs it as well as he can, because –

Eren is not playing games, right now. He truly does look desperate, and – scared, Levi thinks, still so scared, like how he’d found him in the garden. He shudders and he thinks Eren notices, because his hand grips Levi’s thigh tightly.

He had agreed that he’d go through this with Eren. He’d resolved that within himself already. He doesn’t know why it still feels like a stab in the back, like pulling an open wound further and further apart, till it devours him entirely.

"What,” he begins, his voice gruff. He clears his throat. He will do this. “What is it that you want to do?”

Eren frowns, so Levi continues.

“Chemotherapy? Is that – is that a real option?”

Levi notices the way Eren’s eyes roll back, but he bites back the urge to correct the petulant action.

“I don’t have cancer,” Eren says, and Levi meets his eyes meaningfully.

“It looks an awful lot like it,” he counters but, when Eren moves to retreat, to pull his hand away, Levi holds onto it, keeping it there. He closes his eyes and ignores the headache he already feels developing in the back of his skull. _What the hell am I doing?_

“If,” he begins, having to force the words out. “If we try to access these memories of mine that you’re so sure are there,” he continues and, when he opens his eyes, he sees how wide with hope Eren’s are. “If we spend some time, at some point… working through those. Will you let the doctors do what they need to do?”

Eren flinches at the ultimatum, and Levi feels a slither of guilt for having to make such a proposition at all. He watches as Eren works the thoughts over in his head, although Levi personally feels that he hasn’t had time to process today _at all_ as it is. So many thoughts are flying around his skull, so many images, so many fears and worries and it all feels far too much for him, right now.

“Okay,” Eren says, eventually. His expression is pensive, however; Levi waits. “Levi, I…”

“What?”

His gaze turns apologetic, remorseful, unnatural. “I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I wasn’t _sure_ that it’s important, you know. I’m sorry, still.”

Levi frowns at the words. He feels like he should be the one saying them, for some reason. _I’m sorry for always doing this to you. You need to make a choice._

He sighs softly and lifts his hand to cup Eren’s cheek.

“We said together,” he says, defeated, and he knows it's cliché and he knows that he’s grasping at flimsy straws with this, with all of this, but he figures he has to try, anyway. He has to keep them tethered if they’re going to go through this at all. Has to keep Eren close, keep Eren fighting, his own doubts aside.

Eren’s eyes soften a fraction. He smiles weakly. Nods.

“Together.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my god this was so angsty and so serious and it was painful to write yikes
> 
> I hope this was okay!! please lmk what you thought<3
> 
> I know this was super dark but I promise over the next few chapters there will be a lot more lighter interactions and some variations in plot, I hope. Further to this, because I'm soft and I actually do find writing heavy angst quite hard, I'm thinking of writing a one-shot/prequel about how Eren and Levi's relationship began which would honestly be 99% fluff if anybody's interested or needs a break from the PAIN of this omg
> 
> Also I know I said I'd put a playlist in here but now it's like over 3 hours and there's no structure to it AT ALL so maybe next time I'll have tidied it up and should be able to share it with you all jdffksh sorry!! (However the mention of Moulin Rouge means you should 100% listen to Elephant Love Medley and imagine Eren as Christian and Levi as Satine. So pure)
> 
> Thanks again <3
> 
> (PS I've said this before but i am not a doctor, have no medical training, and most of my research regarding cancer etc is purely from the internet - given that Eren's condition is clearly a little different, there will be SOME anomalies with him, but still just wanted to clarify! Also Levi hates the idea of therapy but I'm a firm believer that EVERYONE should get therapy. I have a therapist. Try get a therapist if you can! It's good for you <3)


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